Today was destined, in most almanacs of destiny, to be a day to tryst or enlist and insist.  A day of some self-indulging togetherness.

 

But instead, once again, I spend and end it alone under the storm of the surging Sun dreaming in Dreamland, imagining poetry, lusting for drunkenness, and sticking my white lily tongue out for no reason at all.

 

- laptop, beer, and me: 'after hours' on the balcony of Garfield's monument -

 

I know many of you have gotten accustomed to me calling this, my dreamground, Lake View Cemetery, ‘Dreamland’.  It is not, however, customarily referred to that way by others.  The only reason the cemetery is now Dreamland is because I am the dreamer who makes it so.  There were, I reckon, dreamers here before me, as there will be dreamers here after I’m gone, who both first enacted and will someday re-entrust the attribution.  But now, as far as I can reconnoiter, I’m the only one.

 

 Dreamland

 

What, if this life should prove to be a dream,--

A slumber journey to a fancied sphere:

Would the return to consciousness redeem

The loss, eternal, of the dreamland here?

 

What, if the scenes and friendships that seem real,

Were but the vision of a reverie:

Would the awakening again reveal
The picture of the dreamland mystery?

 

Or, would the thoughts reflected on review
Of the dream incidents, recalled again,

Forever pass away, as most dreams do,

And nought of dreamland’s memories remain?

What, if a choice were offered from above,

To live on earth, or dwell with the Supreme,--

Forgetting all the ties, endearments, love,

In this strange life, if it should prove a dream!

 

What, if the future life, too, were denied

Returning glimpses of the dreamland shore,--

What could the God of all above provide

In lieu of the lost dream, to dream no more?

 

  --upon the memorial of Albert Anthony Augustus, 

            born 1860's, died 1927.