I hide in here, this cove from reality —
like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon:
quadrangular checkered foundation
of baked brick, ‘neath vaulted arches
with roots of palm trees embedded
in terraces built above the ground of sanity.
streams of dreams flow down sloping channels;
irrigation from outside the mind,

   over
the mind,
and
intoit,
   to nurture grass of permanent green.
plums, pears and pomegranates,
plump and ripe on fertile branches,
to feed the imagination.

sky-blue flowered     and rich green
                            m                           g
                           y                               r
                            r                            a
                             t                         p
                            l                             e
                          e                             v
                                                       i
                                                        n
                                                         e

bloom at eye level and beyond
serving as ladders to wonders uncapped,
un clamped by the vises of conformity.

alas, it’s back to there, with them,
(where I can smile and try to fit in)
those heathens of technology
with steel and plastic-hiatry,
reality TV ideology
prattling of cars and football games
but why chat with them when I can do the same

with Nebuchadnezzar, who built this Eden
on "impulse deriving from the love of a woman".
as we climb the tower of Babel he babbles
of losing his mind over Amyitis.
I assure him that sanity is but a cage –

He says “look below and beyond us my friend,
these walls stretch for 50 miles.
Inside and above is every tree known to man
every flower, every fruit that can grow in this land
yet still, she is unhappy somehow...
So I ask you, am I not imprisoned now?”

I look down through the trees of ebony and olive,
past the sprawling juniper and slouching willow,
to the euphoric Euphrates.
I turn to the King of Mesopotamia and ask
“Can you swim?”

(We won’t stop ‘til we get to the Colossus of Rhodes)