Who are The Juices of Midnight?
creative Strategy #988: Ask the right questions
Report from The Occupied Territory
We remain on the periphery of drama
though clueless & plotless we roam
driven by the bewildering compulsions
and allegiances — give the people in our dreams
so much trust, so much guilless fellowship
Yet we retain so very little from our missions
It hardly seems worth the danger.
We walk among them
Follow their inane instructions
Adopt their bizarre customs
& what do we get for our troubles?
Bupkiss. Incoherence. Mazes.
Baffling riots of plot
& no real intelligence
that can survive the journey into waking
Can we just
please stop
& talk sensibly for a moment?
No
That’s asking too much of our dream hosts
& every night we are forced to don our faces
Make that difficult journey back
Over the steep mountain
following the moonlit path
wedging between the cracks
in the craggy cliffs wyhtyvyr
to ask again our brave & useless questions
as if we could cross-examine
the maker of Dreams himself
The Originator
or as I have come to know him
Dark Daddy in the Night Sky
the bastard who left us This
Yet we go on. We must.
We must scribble our illegible notes
listen to their smug evasions
& wriggling like a worm upon a hook
we plumb the mysteries of the night
the scrambled codes of dream fate
that seem so obvious to them
Hoping somehow someday
we might finally grasp
Why is that duck dancing?
Where does death go?
And For God’s Sake
Who are the juices of midnight?
—Patrick O’Leary
Love it.