a beautiful poem

Poetry
Bad Dreams Are Good
by Joni Mitchell September 17, 2007


The cats are in the flower beds;
Bad Dreams;
Environment;
Cell Phones;
Telephones;
The Great Plan;
Eden

The cats are in the flower beds

A red hawk rides the sky

I guess I should be happy

Just to be alive

But

We have poisoned everything

And oblivious to it all

The cell-phone zombies babble

Through the shopping malls

While condors fall from Indian skies

Whales beach and die in sand

Bad Dreams are good

In the Great Plan



And you cannot be trusted

Do you even know you are lying?

It’s dangerous to kid yourself

You go deaf, dumb, and blind

You take with such entitlement

You give bad attitude

You have No grace

No empathy

No gratitude

You have no sense of consequence

Oh, my head is in my hands

Bad Dreams are good

In the Great Plan



Before that altering apple

We were one with everything

No sense of self and other

No self-consciousness

But now we have to grapple

With this man-made world backfiring

Keeping one eye on our brother’s deadly selfishness



Everyone’s a victim here

Nobody’s hands are clean

There’s so very little left of wild Eden Earth

So near the jaws of our machines

We live in these electric scabs

These lesions once were lakes

We don’t know how to shoulder blame

Or learn from past mistakes

So who will come to save the day?

Mighty Mouse. . . ? Superman. . . ?

Bad Dreams are good

In the Great Plan



In the dark

A shining ray

I heard a three-year-old boy say

Bad Dreams are good

In the Great Plan




http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2007/09/17/070917po_poem_mitchell