dream/life

when I am dreaming it is kind of hard to know where my hands are*
Natalie said

.
.
.


all around
the zoo
every body lives in a cage
cages surround other cages surrounding smaller cages still
people in the outer cages look at those in the inner cages
thinking themselves free
every cage and every bar
with time becomes invisible

is it possible to be partially free?
is it a thing sold in degrees, slices?

children in Qalqilya*
cry everyday
their teacher helpless
empty of anything to offer
at the zoo
their eyes feed them
see these animals
lives more repressed than their own
and convince themselves of how
much worse it could be

my niece, not yet nine years alive
so distant on the phone
tells me stories
broken
yet true because she dreamt them

i ride my bicycle
through the life i am creating of my own dreams
through the warm and windy streets of the city
and wonder why i do not feel free

is this part of the awakening road?
realizing that there is no such thing as
partially free
partially true

in an omniversal reality
perspectives on truth
an infinity humans may or may not ever evolve to know

and yet there is such a thing as bullshit

my kin choose pill-shaped freedom
over their intense and chronic pain
i, with my partial-mended heart
take solace in daily fatigue
even the Buddha indulged in comfort
two decades hiding from the pain of freedom
so say projections of an orientalist mind**

i can understand why children lie
so strong is their need to protect their grownups
so strong their belief in the immutability
of their own imperfections

secrets to guard more critical than life
…………………….
before saying goodnight i tell Natalie
that her life, like her dreams
are in her own hands

shackled i
wonder if either of us know
how to distinguish the bullshit from a dream

*http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1616.shtml

**in The Art of Dreaming, author Carlos Castaneda recommends that to bring oneself out of one’s dream, one merely needs to look at one’s own hands.

***Herman Hesse, author of Siddhartha