George Santos' Dream

Dreams of chaos his specialty

he dreams of limp victims stepping out of the waves

water draining from skin and hair

some survivors mill about on the rocky shore

unsteady and pale

even the victims seem more drunk

than dead.

George shakes his head gravely

but without pity.

As usual he had foreseen the disaster 

yet failed to give a warning.

Kick the past from your shoes

with a poem, he thinks

from the dead choose a name

and a college

and a sister named Glad

the only relative he remembers without loathing

who was a servant at eleven

and taught him to eat using knife and fork.

A sudden fright

he feels the soles of his shoes grow warm

so thin,

the crust of his world.

What if a wave populated with

people deposited Glad on the shore?

He feels a faint stir at the thought

like the rumor of an earthquake some distance away.

It was a mistake he now believes

to remember Glad at all.

He picks up his pen 

and writes of huge colored

balls flung over his head 

and sometimes against it.

At the press conference 

he speaks of shrieking children

of butchers--

the butcher children being taught to swim.