For a Dreamer who Understands...

Oft times the dreamer has to wonder:

WAR WITHIN
June 15, 1997
8:08 AM

In a land
below a land
below a land
below a land
where fear commands
and fear demands
are many hands
that reach to grasp
but never clasp
the ones that work above.
They work from fear, not love.

They prey upon the meek.
They feed upon the weak.
And love, they never seek
never understanding...
always hate demanding them...
commanding them to kill...
yet never they die.
Strangle, maim,
their faces never the same but always returning,
always learning nothing.

Hope unknown,
never shown,
they walk in fear of each other and lash out,
smash out,
hash out over and over their never ending cycles of killing,
yet living through.

Trying to do it again,
and again,
and again,
in this land
below a land
below a land
below a land
where hate and fear command and demand of them
a cycle of never coming to know
a way to find relief.
Constantly in grief...

Among them I found me.

Among them was my brother.

Prey to the fear and the hate.
Not understanding, not relating
to anything I saw or felt or dreamed...
I screamed,
and the land never left me.

Another cycle shown.
Another battle thrown at me,
my brother,
(my mother of my later years,
her son),
his many fears and tears,
and over and over the cycles played,
new hatreds made,
new fears portrayed,
or old fear cycling on as if never to come to know,
never coming to grow,
never working into the land above
where we worked in a little more love.
Or the land above that, where fear remained,
but was at a more tolerable level.

What brought this dream on?
Why was I gone so long in this world,
never escaping the outer hatred,
the inner fear?
Why was death near, but never coming?

In fear I screamed,
in screaming I awakened
in the world I know now.
Wondering if somehow
I’d lived that world before.

I can’t ignore the feelings as I wake...
my body shivers,
shaking,
wondering at the hardness of my escape
into what I now call reality.

What I saw within my inner eye...
the skies of lives gone by,
or still to come?
None of this was home.
This land below the land
below the land
below the land
where fear commanded me,
demanded me to be
in fear of me and all around.

Always calling, yet never being heard.
Always feeling something wrong, and sure
a better way was there...
Somewhere.

Have I walked these times?
Have I talked these lines
of hatred over and over
in memories now long past?
The images have lasted long into my waking now.
This dream, yet not a dream
that seems to have brought compassion to my soul.

I was killed,
over, and over, and over,
yet never gone from amongst them,
I learned to lash out,
fight back,
attack before I was attacked,
yet I always lost,
dying, yet not gone,
again the cycle played,
a new face, yet the same
became my foe

and off we’d go again, in private battle
with a knife or gun,
or just our fists and hands trying to strangle one another.

In my brother’s eyes I saw
this thirst to have my death.
This drive to take the breath of life I had.

This tragedy I’ve dreamed before.
What message does it bring,
this cycling dream of battle with him?
What has he to forgive me for?
What have I ignored in the healing between us?
What trust was lost in these lives in eons gone?

What wrong have I done him,
(perhaps in dreams gone past)
that makes this dream last so long
within me?


So finally waking in a land
above a land
above a land
above this land of hate...
and in command of greater learning,
greater yearnings to be free from the bonds
I must have fettered him with,
I send my love back down.

Consciously, hopefully wiser,
I send my love in softness, and in prayer...
hoping it will reach there
into this land of fear and hate
where constantly my brother and I war.

And, God willing,
I hope this time the love comes through,
I hope this time the healing comes,
and we’ll have to fight no more.