Day Nine - At 3:37 a.m.

Day 9 Prompt: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/2011/04/09/2011AprilPADChallengeDay9.aspx

For today's prompt, write a time of day poem. In fact, make the title of your poem the time of day. For instance, "5:54 a.m.," 2:23 p.m.," "Midnight," etc. Then, write your poem. Of course, different things happen at different times of day. So have fun with it.

I don't know that I had fun with it, but I'm relatively pleased with what came out.

Here's my attempt:

At 3:37 a.m.

I awake from a dream of a zombie
Attack in some nameless airport,
And the whole dream is set
Set to God Only Knows
By the Beach Boys

Even in a semi-lucid dream state
I can’t seem to pull myself from sleep
In time to escape from my undead
Husband’s grasping hands.

As Katya and I climb, desperate,
Breathless, the last strains of the
Song echo up through the corridors
Of sleep:

“God only knows what I’d
be without you.”

I spend the morning struggling,
Trying to replay the dream so that
It comes out the way it should:

We reach the helicopter in time
I plant a kick to his face, and he
falls backward
into the terminal
with a splatter
like a Rorschach blot

And my daughter and I fly to the
Safety of a mountain compound
Where we are revered as queens.

That’s supposed to be
the way of dreams, right?
One ends bad, you build another?

But what if a shadow of that dream
Still wanders, grasping, gasping,
Still wearing the face he once did
Only now it’s twisted, contorted,
Almost lifeless, but not?

How do you let that go?
Just kick it in the face
And watch it fall?

And I know, too, in the
Heavy-handed metaphor
Department of dreams,
That I shouldn’t continue
To let it eat me up.

At 6:37 a.m.,
I give up on dreaming,
Drag my body to the kitchen
Where I stare twenty minutes
At the blank page of Saturday

I have my standard plans:
Laundry, bills, housework
Normal doldrums for a
Normal day

And yet, ten years later,
I feel that clawing doubt,
And I wonder, what could
I have done then to save him?
What can I do now to escape?

God Only Knows