PAD Day 15: Kind of a Musical Dream

Today's prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) Write a "dream" poem, and (2) "Write a poem inspired by your favorite kind of music." I've certainly written my share of dream-like and dream-inspired poems over the years, as well as music poems, but I had a little trouble getting started with these prompts today, so I went just a little off the second prompt and employed one of my old favorites, the "Random Playlist" prompt. That is, take the titles of the next five songs from a random playlist (a shuffled CD, radio station, your mp3 files or streaming service, etc.) and work those titles into the text of a poem. I got the next five random titles from my personal music file on Amazon Music, and used them in the poem in the same order I got them. NaPoWriMo suggested listening to some favorite music while free-writing the poem, and I kind of did that, listening to all five songs as I wrote, though I'm not sure if the rhythm or language of the music carried over into my words - perhaps some of the mood did, though. The poem, by the way, is pure fiction - it's not based on a real dream, and I never had a lover named Carol. The song titles I used are:

Black Queen - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
The Cherry Tree Carol - Joan Baez
Canary Island - Houndstooth
Anonymous Club - Courtney Barnett
Who Knows Where the Time Goes? - Renee Fleming

Canary Island Dream

Black queen plots against me,

insidious, insinuating an attack

on the diagonal, sliding

like fingers down a fret board

colliding with my white knight.

Another casualty of war.

Under the cherry tree, Carol,

in the park, blossom petals

snow on us in my dream.

You take another piece,

then another - Checkmate.

Afterward, we take a walk.

What is this place? I ask.

You point to flocks

of yellow birds in the trees.

Canary Island, you say.

They can escape any time,

but they just don't want to.

We are in an anonymous club

of lovers, membership: two,

and we are trying to work it out,

to find the path out of here.

It's been centuries, but

who knows where the time goes?

Minutes become years in a dream.