Adam Stemple

THE DREAM

the dream is a corpse
rotting in school hallways
and the grocery aisle at Walmart
sacrificed on the anthill altar
of colony and mindlessness

the dream is a lie
oft-repeated
by shaved heads and tailored suits
brothers-in-arms in a war
that only they are fighting

the dream is a fire
that chars the conqueror's soul
and tells him to burn his ships
on the shores of a world
new only to him

the dream is a bullet
hollow, pointed,
spinning
how many revolutions
till it strikes its target

and a new corpse is made
a new lie is spun
and the fire peels back
another layer of skin
from our gutless skeletons?


Adam's YouTube video reading of "The Dream"


Adam confesses: "No matter how many times we’ve screwed it up in the past, I’ve always believed the dream of America—the dream of a country united not by race, religion, or culture, but by the tenets set out in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence—was something worth fighting for. I wrote this poem when I felt the fight was lost."

ADAM STEMPLE is an award-winning author, poet, and musician. Of his first novel, Singer of Souls, SFWA Grandmaster Anne McCaffrey said, "One of the best first novels I have ever read." Of his later works, Hugo Award winning author Naomi Kritzer said, "No one writes bastard-son-of-a-bitch characters as brilliantly as Adam Stemple."