Angel Of Dreams (Wisdom) Poem by Liberatore Suffoletta

The angel of dreams has won again,
Climbing Jacob’s allegorical ladder
With insistent gestures, heavy steps
Wrapped in caricatures and cigars
An aquarium’s scent of ripe fruit

It is the wind which disturbs the months
Pulling them into the future
Like the smoke of a steam train
An opaque whistle in the shade
That falls away trapped in mystery
A distant repetition, a wine of blood,
A hideous scream like Guernica

Nowadays silver snakes grown upon my head
Carrying sacks of Sundays, sagging shoulders
Numerous as grains of salt, openly chasing
and returning that which belongs to the sky
Hissing and wiggling and kissing the sun
Coiling securely like ivy on brick walls
Entering tiny openings like red ants
Remembering often their battles
To release poisonous thoughts
of limitations and need for space
so violent; they seek under my heart
They are the owners of inaccessible rooms
Of tragic dances with forgotten persons
In broken nights they dampen my skin
frightening my soul with their music
till, I hear again the dreams of old friends
And the conversations of women I loved
In dreams whose vastness sets me afire,
like the fog on an ocean growing silently
Destroying amber sunlight with joy

Old asleep friends who at times
Dance awakened by my heartbeat
How many dark warnings we forgot!
Till I was left alone in agitated shadows
Atop empty beliefs, stairs of wasted lessons
As the ashen wind pulled time forward
And the bland fruits of the sky
Filled my mouth with parrots
of conventional wisdom and
tails of recurring comets