Who Are These People, and What Are They Doing in my Dream...

As dreams go... and come... anything can be anything.
What is today a verb doesn’t have to be always a verb.
But no verb at all!... not likely... nouns and adjectives
cluster... waltz through a shimmering curtain of memory
into the heart aching for a verb to make it happen,
needing a verb... with adverb or no adverb, but...
you’ve got to have what the English teachers
call the necessary component of all sentences...
and it doesn’t make any difference how much else...
a but or however or maybe an if trying to complete
what is known in the textbooks and medical journals
as premature whatever... it’s necessary to go on,
the alternative being unacceptable at this point
in the game started back there with my mother of
course with more than a little help from my father who
as I remember it didn’t like shoes that weren’t shiny,
unless of course the work made the shine impractical...
Always look for a job that won’t get your shoes dirty.

The man in the coffee shop, with five rings on just
the left hand and almost as many on the right hand
sat with four different drinks all at the same time...
maybe he was expecting somebody who didn’t show.
Nobody wears that many rings for no reason...
and nobody orders an iced tea, a caffe macchiato,
a decaf coffee with artificial sugar and no cream
and a white mocha frappuccino with whipped cream
to have it all by himself, but that’s what... what... what...
and it's exactly here that the verb is absolutely necessary
if... if... if the rings have anything to do with the coffee,
but then some parts of some dreams make no sense at all.