POETRY  - 
​     With the Theme of Dreams        
"the searchlights slashed the night sky
with intimations of immortality: 
was a sequel in the works?"
                                  Photo by Weebly.com                                    

Dream Factory
a prose poem
by  Steve Surryhne

The golden ponies sweep past, a stream of sunlit thunder, flowing over and under the spring green hills where we walked and where, at the door, we kissed. The branches shed their light, colossal blossoms appeared, unbidden, mysterious, sent by a power buried in subterranean darkness. There was certainly no hurry, we were not in a rush, when the sinister fishermen began to crowd around us and began to pick through our belongings, claiming they were seeking miraculous bait. They might have been Buddhists, chanting the Mirror Sutra, though it was unclear what they were drinking, being blue, it might have been Windex. There was no reason to pronounce spiritual homilies at this juncture, they would have fallen on deaf ears. Granted, I was given third place in the foreign bodies contest, I still had to convince the brothers that I had their backs. They weren't buying it and they all drifted off. No Sale was rung up on the quaint ormolu cash register and a slip of paper that said “no regrets.” After that it was all music, all day, and the next. Meanwhile I had lost all sense of direction, the GPS had broken down and was later found out back in pieces strewn among the calla lilies. I couldn't say that any of this led to our lesser or greater happiness. We agreed to disagree, to stay the course, to compromise our dearest, most precious principles, of which, I, for one, possessed none. I know that sounds shocking now, but hear me out. The roaring in my ears led me to a secret cavern deep in my brain where I had erected an idol fashioned from cast-off running shoes and to which I prayed, giving my heart its due in the confines of this ventricular space. The cerebrospinal fluids gently lapped the shores and the synaptic clefts lit up like old-time pinball games. “It's all chemistry” you whispered, suddenly appearing there at my side. I took your hand, and said “I know” and we began to walk toward the exit. Under the scrolling credits we made a run for it to the horizon where a shining logo awaited, engine running; we got in and were whisked to the premiere where the searchlights slashed the night sky with intimations of immortality: was a sequel in the works?
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​​Steve Surryhne was an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at San Francisco State University from 1993-2012. He is currently semi-retired and has recently returned to writing poetry. A native of San Francisco, he was a baby-beat in the sixties, knew some of the beat poets and is now a neo-beat. In his alternate career, he worked in Community Mental Health in San Francisco from 1979-2012. He took first place in the Jack Kerouac Poetry contest in 2015 and has published in The Blue Moon Review and Interpretations. He is currently working on a project with a photographer friend on poem-texts and photos. 
Other works in this issue:
Poetry:
​Herkimer
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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.​
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