Poetry, Dreams Claudia Dawson Poetry, Dreams Claudia Dawson

Not a Rectangle (Dream Poem)

DREAM TELEPATHY POEM, AUGUST 13, 2025

There are times when you don’t see me
as a whole person—
just a completed reality,
a rectangle,
a closed shape.

But I am more than this.
I am sacred geometries,
compounding and unfolding,
expanding the Universe
through myself.

Read More
Poetry, Dreams Claudia Dawson Poetry, Dreams Claudia Dawson

The skylight is a map to my soul

DREAM, JUNE 29, 2025

Another night on the cosmic highway.
I wake in an unknown dream,
on a stranger’s couch.
I don’t know the laws of this realm,
nor the villains,
or even the mission.
Am I the main character this time,
or just a bystander to my own soul?
The constellations light up the sky—
a road map for expansion.
My spirit is restless,
my consciousness relentless.

I have to keep going.

Read More
Dreams, Poetry Claudia Dawson Dreams, Poetry Claudia Dawson

Gossip Angels

We sat huddled on the floor
gossiping like school girls —
in the purest way
and I can’t tell you
what was said
because it’s a secret
but it was about you
and your fears
and how it’s all going to be
OK.

Read More
Poetry, Integration Claudia Dawson Poetry, Integration Claudia Dawson

A lesson in time — the eternal youth and the wise crone

Sometimes the goal is to drop the “I” from all your sentences. To identify less and less with your self or your sex or your station in life. And sometimes there is a need to do the polar opposite of that — to hold on to our form in a closed fist, to re-tell our personal myth over and over again, drop roots into the earth so our spirits don’t float away. I try to let go and hold at the same time. I am a woman with aspects of all different ages and genders within me. In my visions, I ring the church bell of my cathedral and I call them all home.

Night dream, October 22, 2022

The small boy within me dives into a cenote, but is unable to climb back out. He waits patiently for me to save him.

I’m scared, I say, I don’t know how to swim. But I jump in anyway.

This is the entrance to my underworld.

There is no way out, except for a spiraling tower that belongs to the wise crone within me. It’s locked. She has the passcode, but she can’t remember it in her old age.

The small boy and I know we will eventually become this older woman as time passes, bringing along the memory of the code.

All we can do is patiently wait.

Read More
Poetry, Psychic Claudia Dawson Poetry, Psychic Claudia Dawson

The Last Reunion

Midjourney

Sometimes we feel like disconnected segments of ourselves. Periods of our lives are cut off from each other. Our brain rewires and restructures itself, and we forget who we were in the past and what we felt and what we wanted. We forget this is not the only life we have lived. Someday you will call all the various versions of yourself home. Row after row of multiple you(s). Together you will walk toward the Sun. It will be your final pilgrimage, and it will feel like resting.

Read More
Private, Poetry Claudia Dawson Private, Poetry Claudia Dawson

Subtle-body sermonette

What my body truly wants is the freedom to expand and contract without any outside judgement. Without my own judgement. Every month, I shrink and bloat with the moon. My body is alive and mutating and aging and no, I will never punish my body. This is my spaceship. It carries me forth. I climb mountains with it. I align it with my other bodies – subtle or otherwise. My head, heart and gut are all priests in the same temple. I breathe into my spine, set boundaries, widen the stillness within me, stand barefoot on the grass, soak up the sun, leap past man-made intelligences. One body feeds the others. We set off to other worlds.

Read More
Poetry Claudia Dawson Poetry Claudia Dawson

Love does not need an object or objective

“In the church of my heart, the choir’s in flames.” — Vladimir Mayakovsky

Love does not need an object or objective — it is a persistent fire within my heart. It does not need to spread or burn everything down. This is a controlled blaze. I fan the flames with my dreams. It is a consciousness that lights up all of my cells. It does not grab or hoard or need anything. It just continues to beam out of me, like a laser toward the cosmos.

Read More
Poetry Claudia Dawson Poetry Claudia Dawson

Sunday Consciousness

I have been there — on those Sundays
standing on the cathedral steps
when the sun is bright and pious
and it blinds me

What kind of worship is this?

When even in my Sunday dress
and frilly socks
and Mary Janes —
I feel unworthy

What kind of worship is this?

Beams of light dancing on a little girl's skin
and still she feels shame

What kind of worship is this?

This God must die
I have been there — too many times
standing on those steps
sinking into that Sunday consciousness

Here is atonement
Here is absolution

But why must I answer to anyone or anything?

I go back there in my mind —
to those blinding Sundays
to those pious steps
to that sinking consciousness

I pray to a dead God
and I create a new one

What kind of worship is this?

The sun continues to shine — pirouettes on my skin
and even though the sun is outside of me
it warms from within
and this is how my new God
chooses to love me

Read More
Dreams, Poetry Claudia Dawson Dreams, Poetry Claudia Dawson

The ways we protect our hearts

The ways we protect our hearts. “He took certain liberties to protect his heart.” Only in costumes, only comedies, only short plays. But then he said we could wear whatever we wanted to wear on stage, and write our own lines, and as he told us his new plan for our show, his whole face lit up and I thought I saw God in the room.

Read More
Poetry Claudia Dawson Poetry Claudia Dawson

Sailing stones

We were two stones sleeping in the desert,

when I woke up you were miles away,

I asked you why you left,

you said a strong wind had stolen you,

I asked if you still loved me,

you said yes and no,

I wanted to throw myself at you,

you said you and the wind were in love,

I asked what that felt like,

you said like sailing.

Read More
Poetry Claudia Dawson Poetry Claudia Dawson

When you find yourself flooded with Egypt

When you find yourself flooded with Egypt / the gold in your bones begins to sing / close your eyes / we made portals for this / let your blood dissolve / become stars in someone else's galaxy / in death we inherit wings / in life only your heart can fly

Flooded with Egypt created by AI Art Machine

Flooded with Egypt created by AI Art Machine

This poem was inspired by a passage in Antero Alli’s book Angel Tech:

To the Western world of the latter 20th century, Egypt circa 3,000 B.C.E. is a most exotic, magical kingdom of great knowledge and power. A remarkable surge of human identification with this era has unleashed torrents of psionic information from the Akashic Archives.

Your ethical responsibility is to return and help your bodies become more intelligent. Teach them as if they were your children, as they are, and express the denser sides of yourselves. Have patience with their anxiety and ignorance, for without each other—they will grow lonely and you, dear lost souls—will not grow at all—visit their little minds in dreamtime and show them who you are. If they are flooded with Egypt, appear as KA—the bird-human symbol for the soul from Egyptian mythology—but appear!

Read More
Art, Poetry Claudia Dawson Art, Poetry Claudia Dawson

There were poems inside this

Old hand-bound journals I made using repurposed fabric, found paper and ribbon.

Read More
Poetry, Art Claudia Dawson Poetry, Art Claudia Dawson

Oh my darling demons!

Oh, my darling demons

 I love you

 I love you for all the drinks

and the flings

and the hearts you break — 

including my own 

But mostly, I love you

for the words you write

words wearing masks

and carrying machetes

and these words

are always so charming

even when they undress

to show the ugliest bodies

Read More
Poetry Claudia Dawson Poetry Claudia Dawson

As human as possible

I scatter your moons like dice on a table. Pick one. You expel spirit animals from your body. The tiger that claws your heart out. The whale who always digs up your dreams. And that damn peacock you refuse to accept is you. We’re not here to be animals, I say. We’re here to be as human as possible. Find out what that means to you.

Read More
Poetry Claudia Dawson Poetry Claudia Dawson

Every beautiful thing

Before you become miserable in love, remember: not every beautiful thing is meant for you. sometimes the grown-up thing to do is ooh & ahh & walk away. 

Read More
Poetry Claudia Dawson Poetry Claudia Dawson

Tiger heart — a visual poem

Sometimes I dream of a tiger clawing at my chest. In the most recent dream, I discovered him locked in a cage in an abandoned apartment. He was so malnourished he was almost dead. I was also destitute and squatting in what shape-shifted into my old apartment in Oakland. I wanted to feed him, but I was afraid he would get bigger and bigger. I debated setting him free, but I knew he would die. Before I could decide, he broke out of the cage and came after me.

I realize now the tiger is my heart and I have to feed it every day. So every morning I ask my tiger heart what he wants and he says he wants my whole damn life to chomp and chew.

Read More
Poetry Claudia Dawson Poetry Claudia Dawson

What has carried me (an ever-expanding list)

What has carried me from birth until now has been this: love, the openness of the world, wild overgrown yards, imagining I am a princess warrior, digging for dinosaur bones, calling out for god in the dark, what prayer is, wishes, the sky at night, that one star brighter than the rest, my grandfather communicating from the dead, love, the dimensions of dreams, coincidences — no — synchronicities, magic spells that work, love, being alone but not feeling alone, love that grows claws, my mother in my throat chakra, art as a choice, stretching past my shame, a wide open sky, walking in nature, aliens, the believers, love, a murmuration of birds, love, falling down on my knees, getting back up, a warm bed, nostalgia, oh my god, so much nostalgia, animals as familiars, freedom, every beautiful thing, this incessant flowering of time and life — each day, I open my heart up for the looting.

Read More
Poetry, Updates Claudia Dawson Poetry, Updates Claudia Dawson

The resurrection of Phantom Kangaroo

More than 10 years ago, I created an online poetry magazine called Phantom Kangaroo. Its birth could be described like this:

Strange occurrences of kangaroos appearing in areas where they should not be are sometimes reported. Often they appear ghost-like, disappearing or hopping through walls. 

Some speculate they are aliens, or spirits haunting us from another dimension. Someone suggested animal teleportation, maybe they bounce in and out of existence. Whatever they are, these phantom kangaroos are an omen. A cryptic warning that you will soon be falling into the unknown. They seem to say: I am real and I am a hoax, and so are you.

Sometimes poems seem to say the same thing. Sightings of these poems can be found here.

I was in my mid-twenties, poor and living in a studio in West Oakland. Phantom Kangaroo was a passion project that, at times, couldn’t sustain itself. Like the cryptid, it hopped in and out of existence. At one point the domain was held hostage by algorithms wanting thousands of dollars to give it back. So I waited it out.

PK-Hardback-Image.png

This past year of sheltering and cocooning forced me to rummage through my inner cauldron for all the things that bring me life. Creating a space for poetry is one of them. For the past few months, I worked late nights and weekends to put together something that was long overdue — Phantom Kangaroo: The Anthology. It is a 296-page hardcover book of 300 magical and paranormal poems published during the past decade.

Now that it’s complete and no longer haunting me, I have resurrected the magazine. Issue 24 will be published on June 13, 2021, along with the first ever print magazine. Phantom Kangaroo remains an eerie place for poems. The door to the unknown is now wide open.

Read More