The Cartography of Dreams

The road we travel is soiled with potholes,
Deep ones that discard the hitchhikers we meet,
Those people who only stay in our lives
For the amount of time in which we can no longer learn anything from.
The road travels far and wide, up mountain passes, through sandstorms,
And I can’t help but think that all these obstacles
Are placed there as tests to see if we can keep up with one another.
All our roads intersect: some have names, others don’t.
The roads that lead to higher ground are the ones we praise,
While the roads that dip into ashen valleys
Are the ones we wouldn’t have travelled if we’d known
What grimness lay beyond their horizons.

It’s ok that you veered off my path and took someone else’s.
Theirs might be more linear and safe for you.
Mine travels the whole distance of the continent,
Intersecting thousands of others through all sorts of environments,
While your road is short enough to lead a more simple life.
Along the way the landscape got fractured
By dreams that you and I both wanted, yet weren’t possible.
Psychic earthquakes of desire and fear redrew the map,
Causing those pesky potholes to sink the pavement,
Wobbling our wheels off the path we were taking,
Losing us inside panoramas of divergent destinies.
The compass pointed outward and the only directions we could go in
Were ones where we could meet different people and share our stories,
Stories in which we were challenged, stories in which we loved others.
The quantum fabric of our maps change
With each fantasy we imagine ourselves to be in,
So that possibilities are more flexible and other worlds can exist beside ours.
Visual roots take form where the Tree of Life grows,
The subconscious revealing future lives or lives once passed,
Memories repressed and precognitions replete,
Swept under the bed, yet still within reach.
 
Aimless pastures present a passage
Where crows stalk our wheels over dusty crops,
The cornfields lucid from the amber tint of the sun,
Waving as its white glare beats off the chrome.
I know not where this road leads,
Only that once again my imagination will manipulate
The construction created by its convergence with yours.
All we can wait for now is the ocean
That will lead us to new lands beyond,
Allowing us to map out our next lives,
Already highlighted by routes of scenery that churn
Galactic journeys governed by cartographic starlight. 

Subterranean Subconscious

Animals tell the truth, they never lie.
They speak with their eyes and not with their ambitions.
Some even have enhanced perceptions,
Sixth senses, and refined regular ones.
Yet humans consider themselves more civilized,
More rational, more evolved: superior in general.
 
How like our dreams their realities shape who they are.
If only we could see like them our illusions would be eroded,
The offspring of loss less serious,
The inherited sins more clear,
Our responsibilities easier to endure.
 
How like a baby aborted the discarded detours of evolution
Subduct the plate tectonics of subterranean intuition,
Losing us in the rocks of reason, drowning us in the magma of ignorance.
When the thing you trust the most wants nothing to do with you,
Abuses you and uses you to get revenge on something else,
Self-constructed delusions are erected to modify causality.
 
Evolution and fantasy go hand in hand;
It makes you wonder if we’re really evolving.