Shangri-la

Sky is white as snow when I look, I dream
nothing someone, you, have already dreamed.
All this is a language I never learned.
I meant you dreamed what I saw was white sky,
but if I never ask how could you know
the sky was full of snow and not a dream.

Cristina smells Marge on me. I explain
nothing. I go to La Iglesia
where Marge has stayed to sleep without vermin.
Snow never falls in this city, but now
the rain has frozen and blankets the floor
of this place. I let her sleep. I go out.

I call on Myra, who I know sleeps less
of the night, but home, not in theaters
showing third-run movies no one watches.
Bodies entangled or too hot to look
for what the damned call love, they masturbate,
they need nothing now but their own small death.

Myra buzzes me up. She’s with Paula.
They pass a joint and I drink the water
after I’m full to bursting with reefer.
As they talk I go to sleep in the chair.
I dream I am where no one’s ever been.
Shangri-la maybe, where snow always falls.

In the morning I tell Myra the dream,
someone else’s before my own, they are
the same dream but how could she know
the way I tell what happens there on tracks
running parallel and therefore nowhere
I am, she is, we were, in white weather.

(29 January 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander