Last Night I had The Strangest Dream

[Byron]

Last night I had the strangest dream
Afloat on a Golden Sea
Long thin clouds gathered overhead
And were watching only me.

A wizard clicked beneath my thoughts
And I heard six mighty blasts,
From across my view, squat ships appeared
With bare horizontal masts.

I trod the sea to make some sense
Of how I should behave,
Like the drowning man who some mistook
For a friendly outstretched wave.

Which way to go? What clothes to wear?
I felt completely nude.
The wizard turned his gaze on me
His speech was somehow crude,

“You’ll lose, you’re lost, you’ve lost,”
He said, and rubbed his palms with gold,
“I’ve come to take what’s owed,” he said,
Once more my blood ran cold.

I’m sure I’d been inside this dream
In passing nights gone by,
No wizard came to visit then
Another’s stare did try

To send me running for some help
In recesses of my mind,
Frozen still inside my corpse
My legs and arms entwined.

I could not move, I could not speak,
I screamed within my shell,
None could hear or see or help
Within my dreaming Hell.

I’d spent my life within this fear,
Within this living dream,
With no escape and no way out,
Too scared to even scream,

And then I knew whose place I took
Upon this nightmare’s rack,
I shared the pain, and grief and fear,
Of some child within Iraq.

The veil did lift and I could see
Across the gold expanse,
Squat ships with masts addressing me,
As in a grotesque dance.

Great clouds of grey plumed from those ships,
I heard their thunder roar,
“They’re sending shouts of joy to me,”
My spirits then did soar.

But their bullets pounding though my heart,
Screamed, in 'their' savagery,
“Rejoice, rejoice, you simple man
We’re here to set you free.”