Greetings @d-pend (not sure i have credit to post this. here it goes--4th attempt)

Well, you always find a way to torture us some more (as if HF20 wasn’t enough).
Interpreting poetry is hard; interpreting dreams is even harder. Interpreting poetry based on dreams is a freaking nightmare. What to say, then about a poem titled “Sanguine Nightmare”?

As always, I got trapped in the multi-web of meanings and can´t help seeing the duality of ambiguity of the title considering that “sanguine” may mean bloody, but also cheerful/optimistic.

Thus, like most dreams, the poem may hide meanings that are entirely the opposite of what they depict. Dreaming with blood may mean prosperity; dreaming with spiders may mean manipulation. Or, we may be talking about just a dream about horrific juxtaposed images that make little sense and that can be appreciated or assessed simply from the visceral reactions they produced. I have a master in dreaming about surreal things and extrapolations that make little to no sense. Fortunately I forget the details 5 minutes after I am awake. That gives me little time for speculation, although sometimes certain sensations haunt me the whole day, sometimes longer.

This particular poem speaks to me of a dream within a dream. Waking up to find something more nightmarish than what was being dreamed about. I dreamed once that I was sinking in a swamp only to be awaken by the feeling of cold sticky something on my face. There was actually a toad on my cheek. I woke up enraged, swept it to the patio and cut it in pieces with a shovel, then woke up. Some months later, the same happened again.

I think there is much unsaid in dreams, for obvious reasons; not too different from creative writing, where sometimes authors force themselves into subconscious levels to avoid facing head-on the real source of their material. Sometimes is as simple as avoiding shaming the source. Whether it is women, family or neighbors we dishonor, those demons haunt us and sometimes burn in purifying fire avoiding their destiny.