The Dreamkeeper

Tilt your head and whisper in my ear, I'll listen.
Your checkerboard thoughts are my retreats, my advances; I'll carry you across the dimensions. Knee deep in your hallucinations, your feasting phantom fictives: I'll cradle you in my arms and rock you to slow oblivion. You lull; I lullaby.
Drift. Drift like a tumbling stream beaten into tiny, twisting paths by stones, branches, and dead life accumulating along its stretches.
Fall. Fall as if you are Icarus, face ruddy and smited by the sun.
Scatter. Scatter like a piazza full of pigeons and sweaty tourists.
Spin. Spin as if you were a nickel: betting, wining, betting, losing.
Drift. Fall. Scatter. Spin. Wake. Drift. Fall. Scatter. Spin. Sleep.
Know that when you are sleeping I am awake.
Know that when you are dreaming I am raking.
Raking, tilling, sowing, harvesting.
I am your mind's steward. Your delirium's usher.
I am your nocturnal wishing pool. Your nightmare's scaffold.
I grip tight. Tighter than you grip your blanket:forehead beady, wet, profuse.
I am the Dreamkeeper.
I have lost my dreams, so I tend to the dreams of others.
As eyelids grow heavy you pull them shut.
As hours screech to a dreamer's tick, tock: I walk on, firmament pulled over my head.
My cloak sweeps across your dusty, slumbering plains. I bring with me an oasis full of vegetative hopes amid a desert full of waking droughts.