Please don’t tell me it is reality.

Please don’t try and persuade

and convince me of how very real it is

or must be

because it has appeared in a dozen social media feeds

cross-referenced by noise

layered on top of noise—

a sandwich

of amplification

beefed up in the middle

and sealed at the edges

by a thousand and one

moistened lips

does not, in my book,

substantiate reality.

Please do not tell me reality

means this, or looks like that,

sacrificing its glorious verisimilitudes

to a fast-track narrative,

or that it has been mandated by standards

agreed upon in chat rooms

or on assembly lines

cranking shopworn opinions.

Do not try and school me

on the reality of hard knocks

as if the world was uniformly squared

into concrete blocks

and X-marks-the-spot slabs

of tone-deaf guarantees.

Please

do not waste your breath

trying to commandeer reality

into rigged notions

that leave no room

for sliding doors

and rimless visions.

Please

share with me

the beauty of the stones

singing ancient odes

into the grace-fingered wind.

Please

throw away the word reality

for six unnumbered minutes

as you share a cup of black coffee

with the Impossible

and laugh at all the crazy shit

she pops off about.

Please,

show me the secret loveletters

you wrote to the moon

and never sent,

show me your bruised blue valentine

of a heart

that continues to dispatch postcards from the edge—

Please

let me breathe

in that ultimately real mist

where the shore receives the tides,

and let me hear

the moist smacking of lips

when a dew-wet daisy

kisses the honey-fringed lips

of the rising sun.

Please,

let me know,

deep down inside,

that there are more things

in heaven and earth

than are dreamt of in

algorithms and talking heads—

Please remind me,

ala holy silence,

of the worlds unseen

and in-between,

of all the relations

who reside there,

and let me remember

to remember

that cliff’s edges

and sparrow’s wings

bear far greater wisdom

than reality’s slideshow

as filtered through newsrooms

and branded directives.

Please do not relegate reality

to yet another rote, fatigued

and uninspired definition.

For you see,

Reality

as perceived by Imagination,

demands the suppleness of wonder

and participation mystique.

Sincerely Yours,

the lovers,

the dreamers

and we.