If I were an octopus

 or if there were three of me,

then maybe I would have enough arms

 and enough hours

to be all of the places I want to be,

to do all the things I want to do.

At least that’s what I tell myself,

but I know

if there were three of me,

then all three selves

would squeeze into their lives 

enough to tax six people

and those six would want

six more. Soon I would get tired

of just looking at myselves.

Once I dreamed

the love of my youth

knelt on the porch, praying

for me

while I gave clothes and food

to those who had none.

 

But a man came

and whisked me away

without my love’s knowing,

drained my blood

through a plastic tube

 

filled himself

with my energy,

my youth

my magic

turning my veins

to stone.

 

I lay dying,

attached to him

until someone in white

turned a knob,

reversed the flow,

sent his cold blood

back into him.

He cried out,

in anger or pain,

I am unsure.

I saw him once

afterwards,

in a gray coat

on a park bench

in the rain.

 

I walked

by my love’s side

said good-bye to him,

then turned to light

and streaked,

like a trail of fairy dust,

to northern lights,

 

away from the drab man

and rainy parks

away,

to my own country.

 

* Yes, this poem was truly based on a dream.

 Bright tryst and lover’s mist
 he grasps with his mind.
Spiritual, he says,

connected,
one with the universe,
just a child of love,

declaring I AM god
with a little “g” and there
is none with a capital

except one made
in human minds,
and the pronoun HE

is inadequate to describe
the maker of the sunset
which was us, then,

before we put on flesh suits
and wallowed in neediness.
So, I ask him,

“Why is it so hard to believe

in The Great Spirit who loves?”

His answer: vague,
dubious, no up or down,
no absolutes, he says.

I think it is because
if he knows
God to be God,
then, he, the “spiritual one”

is no more enlightened
than the rest of us