A Dreamed Zodiac

by Michael Roderick Fosburg

I dreamed Woman rising from the sea
wearing only waves. Her names rolled
across my tongue
like gritty pearls, but when I spoke
my lips were limp as anemones;
she did not sing to me.
 
The Scapegoat: You danced
before He breathed the world
and revere wisdom
above all things.
 
I dreamed rivals born into the glare
of desert dunes; the younger grasped
the elder’s heel; would later steal
a blind father’s blessing.
 
The Brothers: Brute and trickster, two sides
of the same shekel;
you are reconciled
in love
but do not know yourself.
 
I dreamed a man by the stuttering
of neon light; a bed of shredded documents
propped him up; brick walls
obscured the sun.
Thin-lipped, he mumbled prayers
to paper gods
and placed the pistol
in his mouth.
 
The Banker: You seek to gain
through risk, yet
a well-trod road
is the safer way.

I dreamed a mother
whose veins wept blood
upon the snow. Above her stood an idol
with eyes like mica knives, a smile
like gunpowder’s shriek,
a heart like searching crosshairs.
 
The Prey: You blossom
into innocence
and meet the bullets
without understanding, again
and again.

I dreamed an empty space
toward which
my thought bent;
a dark heart
that unfurled petals
of cosmic dissolution.
 
The Singularity: All feel
your absence—
a wound
of screaming ions;
a deformity
wrapped in flesh.

I dreamed a fury
that tore the cloud’s pale heart
for the sky it hungered after;
we yoked the beast, soothed
its rage with whispered fancies;
set it high
among the stars.
 
The Starship: Your life is brief
and hot; aspire
to startle the stars—disregard
restraint, that prosaic cousin
to rust.

I dreamed a quickened child
whose world was warped
by his false womb. Years later
he still believed
in monsters; goblin grimaces
in the sterile gloom.
 
The Clone: You are trailed
by childhood’s fears. Check beneath the bed
for monsters;
weep for the mother’s kiss
you never felt.

I dreamed a single voice
that spoke a forked truth, that saw beyond
the slipshod flesh;
passed into binary
in apotheosis.
 
The Chimera: You straddle worlds;
fuse dichotomy
with possibility—crown
emotion’s pulp
with hard-edged logic.

I dreamed a starving evening cut with snow
and one bright moon, miles bounding
toward an uncertain sunrise. I howl multitudes,
four-footed, rapacious, and wake
footsore, an exhausted biped
far from home, haloed
with another’s blood.
 
The Lycanthrope: Your stars
are always shifting, and your luck
is what you make of it.
Keep to the paths
you discover;
hold nothing back.

I dreamed a man who left behind
his bars of flesh,
his clamps of ragged muscle; who sailed
quantum possibilities
and was lost
to our static chatter.

The Ecstatic: You stir
at a dream’s remembered flight.
Remember
those airy carriages;
they bear you
from this lockstep life
to the warmth
of distant suns.

I dreamed a falling shadow
whose veins bulged black
with pestilence. Nations shriveled
like cut foreskins
as it spoke in shouts
and then in crooning whispers
and sang the world
to sleep.
 
The Warhead: Your hot heart
craves excitement
and the promise of conquest;
you tend to explode
if your buttons are pushed. Your lucky numbers
are negatives.
 
I dreamed a gullet of flame, the creak
of wings like tremendous sails, reek
of burning depths. It woke hungry
after centuries, rose up to find
that we’d left it behind—
so it feasted
on our ashes.
 
The Dragon:  Your solitude
is complete;
you hoard wealth
but keep a frugal lifestyle. Your temper
burns, yet few are around
to be singed. Your lucky number
is one.  

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Michael Roderick Fosburg is a literature and history major living in southwestern Florida. He waits all year for autumn, pumpkin beer, and mountains.

His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Star*Line, Illumen, MindFlights, Bete Noire, Paper Crow, Polu Texni, Byzarium, Niteblade, SCIFAIKUEST, and elsewhere; his poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Rhysling Award. He can be reached by email, fosburg at gmail.com, or through his blog, http://m-roderick.livejournal.com.