Semiotic Colonial Rhetoric

Myrna Burner ~ Kyle Baker

Did I dream I dreamt this life, up in a tree with the ape-man’s wife?
Swinging that arm in an arc to the future
Slice with kitchen knife a memory to suture
This two dimensional platform soul, this piranha-infested goldfish bowl
Watching the world with enclave eyes
Warped with wonder and self-told lies

And in dreaming did I the ceiling rent, needle eyes the firmament
The folds of time and taste and smell
Return my heart in chest to swell
And rise again on wings of words, illiterate, delicate, double-cursed
To see the world through eagle eyes
And break with glee these ancient ties

This semiotic colony is in dreaming realised, sends out ancient rhetorical spies
To mine the strata of this highway’s lost souls
Leaving the surface littered with pornographic holes
That weaken the mind with futile lust, the reaper, the empty husk
To see the day through glacial eyes
The body’s rise, the spirit’s demise

I may have dreamt it, may have constructed a psychic fire-pit
For wayward hearts and wildered wishes
Drained the drowning pool of Piscean fishes
Blown the leaves to kingdom gone and burst the air with offbeat song
But to dream is not to see through cataract eyes
The world and all whose hope on truth relies