“Intrepid Dreamers,” “Meanwhile” and “Variations on Nineteen Words”

In Issue 49 by Alison Jennings

“Intrepid Dreamers,” “Meanwhile” and “Variations on Nineteen Words”

Intrepid Dreamers

Starved for art,

we were made for poetry;

we are mad for poetry.

Study this hunger;

learn how to feed it.

Intrepid dreamers—

tuned to unhearable frequencies—

used to outnumber charlatans.

Now the emperor

has no clothes,

but everyone else is blind.

Time to get acquainted

with the dark;

the future erases the present;

the past will disappear

over the abyss of hope.

Regeneration relies

on the heart’s ability to heal.

All the rest is hypothesis:

high art or sensual pleasure,

pessimism or good fortune—

hold these carefully in hand,

and make a choice.

(thanks to Richard Powers’ Orfeo)

Meanwhile

in the bright green

room of the world,

she waited,

welling up

with droplets

from wandering

clouds

that washed her eyes

with roiling

rhythms.

A rapidity

of emotional

electricity,

like a radio

stuck

between channels,

hammered

at her frazzled brain,

as if a signal

tower

had conducted

sizzling whispers,

jamming the senses,

and

reversing all polarity

inside the bright green

room of the world.

Variations on Nineteen Words

Break free from captured hopes; dreams should just keep on working. Unfairness

is slated to come down. Negotiate critical opportunities; create an honorable world.

Criticism’s coming down; work to break unfairness in the captured world. Just negotiate

to keep creating—freedom should be an honorable slate, a dream of hope and opportunity.

Come, keep creating opportunity from broken dreams. Hope to recapture unfair criticism.

The world is a just and honorable work. Negotiate downwards, free of a slate of shoulds.

About the Author

Alison Jennings

Alison Jennings, a Seattle-based poet, began submitting her work after retiring from school teaching and the business world. She has recently had over 20 poems published, in both print and online journals, and was a semi-finalist in the Joy Harjo Contest for Cutthroat Magazine. Please visit her website at air and fire poet for details of her published poems.

Read more work by Alison Jennings .

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