The Universe dreamed I was in a wooden room. All the lights were out. My eyes were well-adjusted to the dark and the fine grain of the wood shone through. The Universe checked in on me, as it did from time to time. I told it a galaxy might come and stay with me for a few days next year. The Universe said that would be fine. It would liaise with its calendar and pencil in a good date. Then it closed the door.

rooted to the spot
life grows on me
then leaves again

R.C. Thomas

I dreamed the Universe clung to me. A growing cloud of smoke billowed through an airport full of escalators. Escalators that took us up just to bring us down again. As well as escalators, this was the airport of unreachable terminals. And the smoke darkened. It poured into nooks and crannies. All clean air was blasted with acrid black, and in our acute panic, the Universe and I held each other. We coughed on the not knowing what would happen next.

Later, the smoke had cleared. I was not dead, the Universe was still alive, and I ran freely around a wooden rooftop terrace. A terrace to a property I now owned. Climbing up the steps came a shaded figure with no face. The way it stepped up towards the terrace was automatic and soulless. This, I gathered, was the smoke of the airport in a new form.

The smoke should not have come for me, nor the Universe. I rummaged through a pile of documents until I found the sheet of paper that proved it should not have come for us. In cold silence, it pulled the proof from my hands, turned, and marched away.

Having only arrived onto the property moments ago, I’d not seen the garden before. I looked down over the patio from the terrace. ‘A little weeding is needed between the slabs,’ I thought, but whilst it’s nice out, I’ll invite the Universe over for a picnic.

jigsaw pieces our cracks brought together

R.C. Thomas

there are lakes, rivers, mountains
then there is drought, bush fires, acid rain …
then there are earthquakes, floods

then there is war
there is rubble

an empty house with dilapidated walls
an empty chair where an old man sat and watched his grandson play
an empty playground

an uninhabited earth

then silence

funeral rain —
my foot stuck
in a pothole

Mona Bedi

They were standing in the checkout queue in the supermarket.

– Don’t look now. Kevin is behind us.
– Where?
– At the fruit stall, on his phone, boring some poor sod, no doubt.
– You know, he pinned me to the wall in the café one day. I could feel my blood pressure going up as he talked on and on for a good hour.
– Well, I got my chance to seek revenge. He was sitting in the cafe with a man who is another inveterate talker. As I was passing their table to leave I said loudly, ah, you’ve met your match now! Two great talkers!
– Did you really say that?
– Yes. I could see Kevin bristle, go red in the face. The other man took no offence. He replied in a self-deprecating way, ‘when I told my mother that I got a job as a tour guide, she said, ‘well at least you’ll get paid for talking now.’ Kevin hasn’t come near me since.

all is silent now
lights out, curtains drawn –
but not in dreams

Gerry McDonell

Every sunflower is not a potential sun seeker here. Directionless they look to the west, south and even north when there is a patch of sunlight or just an inkling of a sunray through those passing clouds. Looking at the sky, he grumbles again of infertile clouds not staying to mate on his half acre field

gunshot
a sudden lull
in the egg songs

R. Suresh babu

Sunset strip more fit for New York, window shopping for a training montage: meat hooks set deeply far as the eye can see stretch out to horizon, vanishing point.  Turning flesh, sides of cow dangle, swing, swish, marked down to move — before expiration hits.  Five minutes to midnight, Uber a carriage back to pushing broom?

claim you cannot read
anything in dreams,
even writings on the wall

Jerome Berglund