This poem has been written as a response to the theme of the last meeting of the Barcelona Poetry Workshop - which was "Crime".

     The central idea of the poem was using a dream that I have had more than once, but not on anything like a regular basis, where I think I've killed someone!  What interested me was not the absurdity of the dream (I hasten to assure all readers that I have never committed murder!) but the lingering and unsettling belief when I woke of there being something real about the whole experience.

     Guilt is a feeling which is always near the surface because in a comfortable modern Western life there is much that you should feel guilty about.  

     The keyboard that I am using to type these words, although designed in the United States of America was "assembled" in China.  By who?  How old were they?  What were they paid?  How many hours did they work?  What rights did the workers have?  Although I formulate the questions and have some information about the conditions that the workers have to endure and am pretty sure that not all of their rights are respected - I still use the machine and, let's face it most of the time I do not give it a second's thought.

     There is no need, of course, to stop at technology.  What food we eat, how we get it and what price is paid for it, is also something which gives you pause for thought.  If Fair-trade chocolate bars and tea bags exist, what does that say about those items which are not marked with the logo?

     I live by the side of the Mediterranean and all you have to do is continue south from where I live, cross the Straits of Gibraltar and continue around the coast of that sea to realise that the fatal differences in the way that countries govern themselves and the catastrophic relationships that they have with other countries that are neighbours produce situations that reflect shame on the way that we live and let die today.

     So, possible guilt is everywhere you look!  It is hardly surprising that a sleeping mind's unconscious thoughts look to find a clear example to focus on.

     I remember as a child watching a series of crime B movies in B&W on our first television and I was constantly horrified at how easy and 'accidental' murder was: a bad tempered push, a trip, a head against a mantlepiece, a death.  The story of the film was in how the perpetrators reacted.  Usually they panicked and the situation became more and more complex with the eventual ending making the guilty pay.  In my youth you did not get away with crime in the films, morality would be upheld: the stolen gold dust would trickle out from a tear in the sack and blow away in the storm; the car would jolt over a rock, the suitcase would spring open and the money scatter behind the oblivious driver; the thieving gigolo narrator was dead all the time!  Justice would prevail.  Must prevail.

     Now, such moral certainties are no more in modern films: murderers get any with it; thieves keep the cash.  What does guilt mean today?

     I don't think my little poem gets into much of the ethical relativism that we are surrounded by today, but I do emphasise the uncomfortable feeling you sometimes get when the concerns of the dream world make their way into a living reality!

Again

I sometimes dream I’ve killed someone.

A man I think it is.  I hope it is –

because, even in sleep,

I cannot bring myself to

contemplate alternatives.

But there, perhaps, I just deceive myself.

I recognize the countryside,

the hedge where I (inexpertly,

I’m glad to say) roll through

the corpse.

The dream then ends.

I don’t wake up.

Scenes change to brighter things.

But when, I think, I truly wake,

I’m haunted by the clinging dread

of sticky, slight, realities.

Worlds merge and drip and

trickle into daylight cracks

that gape like graves.

The tightening circle

of a stubborn thought

denies the pardon’s space.

No one comes,

is ever there,

to brush the spot away.

Once again, let me emphasise that I will be happy to respond to any comments.