In Your Dreams

A Micro-Chapbook of The Extraordinary

In Your Dreams: A Micro-Chapbook of The Extraordinary

In celebration of reaching over 250 subscribers, I mentioned some time ago that at this milestone I would release my FIRST-ever poetry chapbook as a gift to everyone for joining me here on Substack.

I’ve been writing professionally since 2020, with my first poem published in Spring of 2021, but unprofessionally, I have been writing both stories and poems of the strange, the terrible, and the fantastic since elementary school. Since growing, reading, and coming to understand the absurdity of the world through my own specific, elf-touched lens, my work has only grown more strange, more terrible, and more fantastic. So much has been said about the nature of stories, and probably more eloquently than I might say today. However, I truly do believe that the very tapestry of this reality, all that we perceive and understand, all that could be, and all that might be, is woven together on the loom of our imaginations, composed precisely of the threads of every story ever spoken aloud or written. As I said in my last essay…

…all people are witches in that they may invoke the world around them and the world to come with both their intention and actions. I believe an addendum must be made. Every last person is, too, a storyteller. There is not a person living or dead that has not contributed to the book of the world, and in legacy both forgotten and remembered, so, too, their words reverberate. That is the honest-to-goodness power of the human being. It is a power capable of terrible things, undoubtedly, but also of unspeakable beauty.

This chapbook of poetry is based on dreams, other realms, the frightening, and the fantastic. It is a short read, to be enjoyed with a cup of coffee or tea, and hopefully as a means to aid the reader in calling upon their own dreams of great and terrible things, or to consider that their own dreams very well might just be a secondary world in which they not only glimpse behind their eyes, but a world in which they live.

I titled this first chapbook of mine, “In Your Dreams”, after my Rhysling-nominated poem of the same name (definitely not for anyone under 18, by the way, as there are brief glimpses of intimacy throughout; but you know your young ones—I propose a curious caution, if nothing more). Of course, anyone that has read my work more regularly, would find that many of my writings are based on dreams. Someone once described me as “half-way in the dream world”, which I believe is nothing if not accurate. I am present, surely. As someone that deals with anxiety and dissociation often, I try to return frequently to the spirit of Ram Dass “Be Here Now”, but, if I am to be honest, even in conversation, I am playing hopscotch between worlds, for better or worse. My mother loves to tell me about how sleepy or dreamy I’ve always been; rarely crying, but so often elsewhere; off in space; away with the faeries. It’s interesting to live most of my life on that bridge. There are drawbacks, surely. But, if I can steal a little bit of fire from the gods and bring it back to the waking world, whilst I am here, I am going to do just that.

So, please enjoy this gift from me to you.

Thank you for being here.

Silvatiicus Riddle

★★★

Flipbook: In Your Dreams: A Micro-Chapbook of The Extraordinary

(in my opinion, the flipbook version looks best on a PC, but enjoy as you please)

PDF: In Your Dreams: A Micro-Chapbook of The Extraordinary (PDF)