“Forbidden City” by Gail Mazur. - Slate Magazine

“Forbidden City” by Gail Mazur. - Slate Magazine:

We have a perfect alignment of opening phrase , "Asleep until noon I' m dreaming..." and the contents of a the sort of dream that occurs when you force yourself to slumber long after the body and brain have had the amount of rest they require. For me, a long time believer in my right to sleep in on days I have no obligations of work, family or friends, I wake up in starts, clutch the pillow tightly and and close my eyes into a squint to block out the light straying through the curtains. 

The dreams that come are not depictions of happy places, serene surrealism or the wondrous unfolding of secret meanings; the brain has already kicked in with an agenda of things to be done that day, to be considered, and because I've chosen to sleep longer against the common sense limit, the thoughts express themselves in images where dark secrets and social anxieties and unresolved items of self-acceptance and the like create perplexing scenarios. I wake up feeling drugged and battered about. I slept in and paid the price of remaining in dreamland by being made to witness the locks on the various compartmentalized open up and see the unconsidered and undisclosed contents emerge and perform dramas and comedies of antic proportion. 

It's a disturbing experience, and there is nothing I want more than a strong cup of coffee to pull me from the powerless wallow in my pool of imagistic uncertainty. This is , in effect, is the filing system of the unconscious mind, attempting to classify and  categorize what the errant napper has decided to put off until tomorrow. The brain , though, does not forget and it does not forgive procrastination, as what   we have ignored in our waking lives will visit us again at those hours when are supposed to be recharging our bodies minds and souls and that mind, irritated to be sure, will nag us until we wake up, exhausted. 
 
Mazur's poem has that feeling, a jet streamed slide into a play that amounts to an accumulated series of anxieties involving a relationship that has become deadened; the structure is unsound.