When you’re tired, everything’s worse

What It Means When You Dream

• You Bought a Red Cadillac
• it means your face is on fire
• it means your hands grab anything that moves
• it means you want to be kissing her scarlet knees
• it means you want one bloody shrieking crimson haunted wish
• to finally come true as you speed past
• your blindfolded childhood drive until your life
• finally works it means you want a ride so fast so smooth you’ll glide
• into home right through your front door no questions asked
• it means your inflamed dream is racing you into the future
• where naked people are waiting to greet you embrace you
• are lined up to jump inside the passenger seat
• it means your headache will recede into a night of fingertips
• easing the pain your back drenched against the leather
• cherry colored ignition blush like your first hot wheeled crush
• energy pulsing feet solid on the pedal touch
• your hands 10 and 2 o’clock like they taught you back then when
• all you cared about was her skirt riding up over your cool hand
• slap her thigh it hurt to look her in the eye one kiss to last all summer

Dogs and Poetry

• Last night she dreamed of dogs and poetry
• they were giving a reading in a living room
• different breeds, long-haired, handsome
• golden and chocolate, panting, stacked
• on a loft, pouncing one at a time onto center
• stage, their poems in their teeth, collies on edge
• pugs in love, shepherds fierce with loyalty,
• labs with their heads in her lap, she was sitting
• up there with them, coaching, petting, a box
• of biscuits in her lap, rewards for their words
• which astonished the audience, a miracle, so fresh,
• new, they barked in iambic pentameter, singing
• the blues these dogs were so damn cool we all
• wanted to bite them on their pink tender bellies
• we all wanted to suck their life into our tired souls

Dead Tired

• When you’re tired
• everything’s worse.

• Glimpsing a rogue hair
• spurting from the side

• of your chin is like seeing
• the end of the world.

• Have a nap your inner voice
• instructs you, have one now,

• lay down and float into the cloud
• of dreams you should have had

• last night when the heat
• kept you tossing with worry

• about people you love but can’t
• help, can’t fix, if only they’d listen,

• but you’re too tired to grouse
• so you dance naked

• through the house, singing
• loud enough to wake the dead.

• Haven’t they slept long enough?
• Time to get them out of bed.

Kim Dower is the City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood. She has published three collections of poetry with Red Hen Press: Air Kissing on Mars, Slice of Moon, and Last Train to the Missing Planet. Her poems appear in several anthologies, including Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque Books), as well as journals including Rattle, Barrow Street, Ploughshares, Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, and Poem-A-Day. She teaches workshops Poetry and Dreaming and Poetry and Memory at Antioch University. More at kimdowerpoetry.com.