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Flower Dreams

Dreamed c.1975 by Allen D. Winans

In Golden Gate Park
In San Francisco
I leaned over
To pick a flower
And found myself
Staring in the face
Of a part-time policeman
Part-time gardener

I tried to ignore him
Concentrated on the flower
Which was nearly as tall as I
And reached out toward the sky

I leaned further on over
To sever its roots
Found myself attacked
From all sides
Lost one ear
One eye
My nose
Part of my scalp
And nearly all my sense

I struck back bravely
Sought the aid of the gardener
Who smiled with evil intentions
As he handed me his shears
And leaned over to watch
Me take the flower's life

I took the gardener's instead.

SOURCE: Dreamworks: an Interdisciplinary Quarterly, v.1 #2 (summer 1980), p.119. First published in Second Coming, a poetry magazine (1970s)

EDITOR'S NOTE

The violence here is no fluke--no eruption of dream irrationality. Winans served in the military and wrote on the brutalization of both soldiers and civilians in war--or "police actions" as they were called.

This flower who fights back is no fluke either. Not to anyone who lived through the sixties and seventies in San Francisco: the emblem of the Hippies and the Peace Movement.

--Chris Wayan


LISTS AND LINKS: Only in San Francisco - flowers - cut! - violence - cops & cop mentality - dream poems - Golden Gate Park dreams: Oriole Girl - Xanthe's Tunnel - The Videographer's Apprentice - Starhawk the Witch - Invisible Kyoko - more from Dreamworks

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