"Xanadu" (In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan") was apparently written in the poet's dream. Sometimes I write poetry in my dreams, not all of it is coherent,. I sometimes wonder what my subconscious is saying to me.

It’s not for men to judge, condemn,
The dissenting voice to die,
But to forgive, and let him live,
When others question why.
That host on high his fate decides,
Leave his soul in their hands,
Let Gabriel’s kin absolve the sin
Then you can save the man.

This was chanted in my dream as I dozed on Felixstowe seafront

One is the lover that foolishly spurns you,
Two are the suns that carelessly burn you,
Three are the oceans that circle our lands,
Four are the ancestors made by God's hands,
Five are the orbs that govern the waves,
And six are the cities now dead in their graves,
Seven the prophets that foretell the end,
Eight are the omens the heavens will send:

Firestorm, ice-storm, famine and flood,
Windstorm, wave-storm, moonfall, blood.

This one came to me as I woke up.

I wrote this rhyme without a reason
When it was the winter season.
I had no reason to write rhyme
When it was the summertime.

(I wrote 6 lines of verse in a dream. When I woke up I could remember only the 5th and 6th lines and fragments of the first 4, but I was able to remember the concept and emotions. With that in mind, it was easy to finish it later in the day.)

Bury my body in some grassy place -
A mound of soft earth by a grey-watered lake,
Pile up the turf for my waterside tomb,
And bury me snug in my mud and grass womb,
Plant pale lilies nodding heads heavy with sleep,
In my buried ribcage their roots will run deep,
Their petals as waxy as moribund flesh,
Their odours as rank as a dying man’s breath –
A tree is my headstone, the world is my bier,
And pale stinking lilies say “a brave man died here.”

In a dream I was reading the lyrics on the dust sleeve of a vinyl album. It was some sort of song or hymn relating to an Egyptian themed temple/priesthood. Out of the 8 or 9 verses that I read, I can only remember the jist. The ancient Egyptian religion had evolved into the modern age. An ancient place of worship had been rediscovered, giving insights into the origins of the religion and the song honoured that discovery and the ancient roots. The first verse is the jist of the whole hymn, but I remembered and wrote down the final verse when I woke up (dust on the byways of life stuck in my mind).

Under the sand dunes, silent and shifting,
Once there were priests in these long-forgot halls,
Once there was singing, not silent sand sifting,
In rooms long-abandoned, words carved on their walls.

Robes once sighed softly on time-polished flagstones,
The creed that's eternal vibrates in the air,
Time marches onwards, the creed has a new home,
Another place throbs with its lessons and prayer.

"I am witness to every oath that is spoken,
From deals in the daytime to deeds in the night,
The master, the servant, the slave that is broken,
To both victor and vanquished in trials of might.

"I am the builder, and I am the breaker,
The power that's nameless and hidden from sight
I am the founder, and the forsaker,
I am the dust on the byways of life."

Magnificence, magnificence,
Everyone is different,
A glass of wine may be the one,
Or maybe strolling in the sun.

When you write country music lyrics in your sleep, it's time to worry (note: British pronunciation of "vase" is "vars"). In my dream, I heard it sung.

You can mend a broken table,
You can mend a broken vase,
But it ain't that easy,
To mend a broken heart.

When you walked out that door,
You just tore my heart in two,
You broke our love in pieces,
And there isn't any glue.

The remaing verses were added while awake:

Since you went and left me
I must now "do it myself",
So I kept our Black and Decker
When you left me on the shelf.

The love songs that you sang me
They turned out to be such tosh,
Now I'm more em-powered:
It's one woman and her Bosch.

Each fur coat is an outrage,
A plea for mercy and a cry of pain,
And while others run their hands,
The length of a swathe of silky fur,
I touch the dead, dismembered pelt,
And feel my naked fingers burn -
Electric shocks of death and the pain of it.