A Year With Dreams

I'd like to spend a year with dreams
As dangerous as tigers starved from drought,
So dangerous you'd hear the screams
As flesh was torn off of the bones of doubt.

I want to shed the pretense of the night,
The moon's false face
Which grants a trace
Of light that's not its own.
I'll hold out 'til the morning bares
Herself. I'll feel the groan
Reverberate the skies. Who dares
Take on the sun and fill up with its light?

I want to lure the tigers with my blood
That drips down off my fingers to the mud.

Shall I strike out in bamboo fields?
Shall I allow myself to strike
Out, hoping that such danger yields
A lesson from that lonely hike?

The tigers lurk behind the bamboo grass.
I see their eyes.
I hear their sighs.
I smell their breath.
I taste the death
Of my past life I left to dream. I pass
Into another life where all my vivid dreams alone
Bear grapes abundantly; for only then can I atone
For all the times I failed to give dreams mass.

I want to take the tigers of my dreams
And harness them and drive them with a whip
And leap them over all the rapid streams
And raise myself and never lose my grip.