The sanctity of the creative process

on a tour
JGM there with me
writing a book or an article
everyone
always waiting for me to do
something outrageous
easily scandalized
as if the two of us are onstage
she and I are arguing
about who is going
to take a shower in the morning
later one of the kids
not ours
comes in with a friend
starts reading from one of her articles
I stop him
saying something about
the sanctity of the creative process
he starts to mock me
I tell him to finish this sentence
"after he set the book down
his pants were around his ankles..."
his friend laughs
the kids leave

A museum where all the works have vanished leaving only the signs behind

something astonishing
mnemonics setting up
within a vague preconsciousness
a delicate sense of holding
the entire world
as a shattered egg shell
not entirely fallen apart
yet
but in that tender moment
even the softest light
of consciousness
becomes everything
it centers the world around it
its intention
the focus
remember
the rewriting of one of
Shakespeare's plays
the tempest on a tortoise shell
enough to bring it all back
but it is not
only the mnemonic remains
enigmatic souvenir sign
what was once under the painting
the painting itself now gone
a museum where all the works
have vanished
leaving only the signs behind
sorrow upon awakening
holding the mind
still and quiet
barely breathing
watching for shapes within
the grainy shadows
the mists of the dream
dissipating with each dawning moment
of disappointment
in the failure of memory

How utterly unremarkable it all is

waiting for someone to die
passing time
at the old bar in Austin
employee meeting
in the morning
customers and other employees
coming in after a night of drinking
I have been away
visiting friends
at an Ivy League University
many customers
believe I went there
because I was leaving to attend
they are tipping me extra
to help with the tuition
JGM and I are working together
waiting for Emac
he comes in
tells me he has new guidelines
everyone must give a pint of blood
in order to keep their job
I am trying to explain
it is against the law
you can't force employees
to give blood
and my blood
for example
is toxic
he is not listening
wants me to gather up everyone
and take them behind
the jack in the box
down the street
I am waiting on whomever
is going to work while
we are all meeting
she comes in late
riding a bicycle
I think her name is Marcie
but am not sure
don't really know her
I say her name anyway
what seems most remarkable
to me about all of this
is how utterly unremarkable
it all is

Complicated stories being told

elusive narratives
a series of disconnected
fragments of my days
on Margate Sands
over several nights
themes orbiting around
an abandoned school
elementary particles
older selves
the once discarded
now recollected
archetypal constructions
names repeated
faces reflected in
facing mirrors
doubling elaborations
these monster ghosts
and a vague sense
of divinity
upon awakening
these complicated stories
idiot mythologies
being whispered to me
behind the painted curtain
of the scenery
just beyond the reach
of memory

Anagogy: And the blind eye creates

The source of dreams is unknowable. Always beyond our understanding. We want to say: deeper than our understanding (emptying phrase). The dreams seem to arise out of some Ur- foundation of our being, primal, ineffable, defiant of the limitations of language and, to a lesser extent, imagining itself. Dreams emerge into consciousnes out of shadow and depth.

Our consciousness sits trembling, a poor beast on the threshold, safely housed within our conception of self. The dream resolves out of the Dark Wilderness in increments of wonder. The bonds of sleep hold us to our vision, Odysseus tied to the mast before the Sirens. We cannot look away,  whether this be through fear or fascination - or a charmed mixture of both.

There is no actual sensation. All arises from within. The fabric of our vision has been woven by ourselves alone. This is the inward perception, shadows dancing on the cave walls of our skull. All too quickly, we conceive the story, the narrative, imposing meaning on mystery. The rags and poor vestments of our imagination are fitted quickly upon, instantaneously giving substance to, the shadows of the dream. There is a stage now. There is an actor. And another. Dialogue. The ancient drama unfolds before us, now the audience. All of this in a quicksilver shimmer. It is a great mystery of our being.

And so the writing down of dreams is always suspect. The tendency to gloss over, to amend lacunae, shape into narratives - transforming nonsense into sense. Still, even through this, the mystery remains. Often it is that aspect of the dream we thought insignificant, that one detail we almost neglected to include. Nevertheless, by writing down dreams we subject them to a reduction, a Procrustian process of interpretive (pornographic) writing. These symbols in argument with each other upon the fire-lit stage of our interior cavern, this drama will not confine itself to even the broadest of linguistic mis-prisons.

But we want to remember. We want to understand what this nightly drama is trying to tell us. But who says it is for us to know what dramas engage our archetypal beings? Who amongst us can translate the thunder and the lightning? But we want to remember. A sad prayer whispered into the wind by the monk desolate in the Desert. Oh God, please speak to me. And so, he dreams.

The unknowable cannot be written. And once the Dream is aware that we are sitting out there in the audience with pen and paper, scribbling feverishly before the Mystery, then the Dream changes, refigures itself to fit our sorry horde of words, as the radiant king removes his robes and takes on the rags of the lowliest beggar. Greek tragedy becomes a banal television sitcom. More insidious, the Dream takes on the attitude of the ally, the friend, the helpful guide when it it actually the adversary. Satan, Mephistopheles, Iago, Kaa, Gollum. This is the dreadful masquerade. They encourage and strengthen our resolve to penetrate the mystery of the Dream. Always there with the helpful word or phrase at hand, whispering poisonous instructions to our attention, hand on elbow, false Vergils, leading us into the pit of mis-understanding.

We cannot trust ourselves: we, who rationalize and lie and in every moment or our daily lives drain our words of all their blood. And so, what are we left with?

What remains is war. There is no trust in words anymore. We must use them as tools to immediately discard, knowing that to use a tool found within the illusion only strengthens the baseless fabric of that illusion. Long ago: faith was broken. The words can dance before us on the page, a thousand mirrors full of our reflected hopes, each letter a cage within which sings a tiny fragment of our soul, singing only because it is imprisoned. Keats' nightingale forever trapped in its melodious plot of beechen green and shadows numberless.

What also remains is the Dream. For it is everything. And however mindlessly we spend our time, we must pay attention to it. For in this dark and empty world, it is the one of the only lights we regularly are able to find. Every night, we sit in the cave of ourself and stare into its fires, watching the drama of our Self unfolding....

But we must be careful what we say...

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

- T. S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday (fragment)

He wants me to reveal his skull

I am interrogating a prisoner
a captive
a figure from the other side
there is another there
we place the man
in a device that fits around his face
the interior is full of razor blades
once on
these blades will slowly cut
all the skin from his skull
the prisoner know this
and he is happy
with the knowledge
of what I am
getting ready to do to him
I think
perhaps with slight awakening
this is his strategy:
he wants me to reveal his skull

Because I am Hamlet

the production of a play
high school reunion
LB was the director
I was in the lead role
an amalgamation
of Hamlet and contemporary themes
LB there with husband
and an old friend
who I didn't recognize
he had just had a sort of throat surgery
a new fashionable thing
where he mouth was removed
and skin grafted over the hole
I kept trying to make him laugh
tear the hole open
we are in a large modern performance hall
everything is chaotic
I am confident and happy
full of mischief
LB leaves to go to the store
across the street
the play is supposed to start
there is no clear delineation
between the audience and the stage
I clear out a space
I am wearing headphones
listening to the sound of the wind
while I am playing
an exposed set of strings
a deconstructed grand piano
with a rack of long tubular bells
making harmonic feedback
by placing them close together
I take off the headphones
and realize the sound
was not as harmonious as I thought
but I am greatly amused
the audience does not know
what to think
LB is still not there
I go to look for her
find her in the bathroom
the friend with no mouth is there
I tell him a joke
that makes him laugh
almost tearing open the hole
I can see the outline of his lips
his wife is mad at me
LB comes out
ready to begin the play
I am moving signs and props
to an arbitrary back stage
the audience believes all of the movement
is part of the play
I have the feeling
that I am not doing a good job
but everyone believes I am
because I am Hamlet

But then the glass breaks

a university
performance hall
an old friend who teaches
trying to see the performance
end up going back to her house
a long discussion in a small room
the middle of the night
our figures are elongated
as if we were drawn by El Greco
we start to kiss
but I am aware her husband
is in the kitchen now
opening a drawer
it doesn't seem important to her
and I can't tell
if it is because she doesn't care
or if it is because he doesn't care
I run to a small window
too small for me to fit through
and try to jump outside
into the garden
I am stuck for a moment
but then the glass breaks

I believe the storyteller / magician is a secret agent

long complicated conspiracy
attempts to save someone
only remember the last fragment
was told by a woman
to go to the library
couldn't get away
so I sent S.
an old employee from the coffee shop
gave him instructions
on what to look up
a revelatory genealogy
told him I would be right behind him
sense of urgency
after he left
the woman told me to note the path
I had traveled on the island
scene now Anacortes
if I looked on a map of the city
I could trace the figure of infinity
in my footsteps
I get to the library
there is a sign on the door
to be quiet
because a storyteller / magician was performing
walk in
large group of parents and kids
old and young
See S. in the next room
not the normal circulation room
he is excited
wanting to show me something in an old book
I can't get to him because of the crowd
and I believe the storyteller / magician is a secret agent

But i sense that he is here to tell me something

walking along a dam
some sort of reservoir
I look down and see an old friend
who I used to coach in football
he has long white hair
he is standing at the top of a stairway
I stand above him
call to him and start down a steep stairway
then fall forward
off balance
and nearly fall
I catch myself just in time
we laugh together in relief
he climbs up
with him are a group of young hippies
he had told them stories about me
one of the girls is sitting on my lap
not seductively
but as a daughter would with a father
I am dismayed at this
but know it is appropriate
she keeps wanting me to tell her stories
I look over to my friend
he is watching
listening to see what I will say
but i sense that he is here to tell me something
and is waiting to see when I am ready to hear it

My head is filled with an apocalyptic vertigo

a variation of the house on 16th street
looking out my window
over the ocean
see a tidal wave approaching
growing enormous
cresting over as it surges inland
boats, cars and people falling over the edge
the wave crashes down below
but I know the water will rise up to us
I think I should retreat
to a high place inside my room
then realize that it will be under water
I go outside in front of the garage
searching for a higher place of safety
my sister is there
We retreat to the interior of the garage
and close the doors to break the crash
of the first wave
the doors start to break apart
but hold enough to allow us to get out
and find another place of safety
my sister sees a dog running through the yard
and goes to get it
I try to call her back
I can see another wave building
out beyond islands
a swelling darkness rising above them
I know this wave will sweep directly into us
I am calling my sister
telling her the dog will be all right
we move to higher ground
find her husband
he tells us most of the houses below
most of the land
have been swept away
now there is a collapsing cliff
that the waves are crashing into
each waves seems larger than the last
R and I are now driving down above the cliff
looking at the damage
my head is filled with an apocalyptic vertigo
R is concerned about some of his property
we get out by some apartments
the back half is gone
fallen into the sea below the cliff
it seems like we are safe
but I can see another wave
more monstrous than all the rest
coming towards us
we are on a cliff
thousands of feet above the sea now
and I know the wave will swamp us
I imagine the continent had tilted
I know nothing will be the same ever again
I imagine most of the West coast is gone
R is not paying attention to me
he is talking with a survivor
water is rising
it will be impossible to drive away
I turn towards the mountains
in the distance I can see volcanos erupting
I wonder if there is anyplace to go anymore

Hovering illuminated in the air

coordinated effort by family, friend, group
to either fly a ship away from a hostile place
back to safety
or fly into a new world
with no knowledge of what may come
training for this
one of us in the group
figuring out that it would be easier
to communicate with the ship
via a form of mental shorthand
the symbols now
hovering illuminated in the air
before me
mix of the Kabbalah - which I do not know
Hebrew - which I do not know
and shorthand - which I do not know

waking towards consciousness
musing over the symbols
as a dream shorthand
a language of god
a bridge to the unconscious

Wondering how I got distracted from BBQ

in Dallas, Texas
searching for BBQ downtown
amongst the old buildings
mirrored exteriors
heavy dark wood interiors
silent elevators
the doors open on an expensive room
I step out
realize I am in the wrong place
my mind is troubled
two of the Good Time Girls are there
S and M
they call me over to the table
ask me to sit and share drinks
they are full of historical gossip
I break in more frequently
with what they perceive
as increasingly inappropriate language
but I believe I am speaking the truth
S takes offense
at first I think she is joking
but she gets up from the table and leaves
I believe that later
she will understand the reasons for my behavior
I get up and leave a $20
then take it back and leave a $50
saying to M
tell S I am sorry
y'all have a couple of drinks on me
I walk towards the elevator
wondering how I got distracted from BBQ

The inner light through the interior woods

paranoia about surveillance
multiple identities
several vehicles for each
working to be happy
in this bleak world
finding a dark path
through the dark night
insisting upon genius
character not exceptional
the inner light through the interior woods
following bliss
discussions about the word
the echo with kiss
the intimations of bless, blessing
the aftertaste of blister
there needs to be a better word
to follow

One of the girls is a cyclops

an old clapboard house
in Austin
ex-wife lives there
with some of her friends
shifts between my living there
another guy,
a foreigner also there
a person not to be trusted
the last measures of a party
everyone drunk
waiting to leave
next door is a bar
very dilapidated
falling down, dirty
last call
go over to get a drink
with an friend from FringeWare
he doesn't drink
but I want to him to order
so I will have two drinks
for myself
I go in the other room
when I return he is gone
girls sitting at the table
I think one is someone I know
but I am mistaken
one of the girls is a cyclops
but when I look back
she is normal
I order another drink
a young girl sits at the table
wants to sip my drink
we have to leave
I return to the house
everyone is asleep
I am cleaning up
find a piece of paper
that plays music
I throw it in the trash
the music is getting louder
I am worried about waking everyone up
take the trash can outside
there are a lot of tups and buckets
in the living room
around the record player
there is a David Bowie album
a lot CDs in the wrong cases
I suspect the male roommate
who seems German now
of messing things up
again the music becomes too loud
I turn it off
there are plants in the tubs and buckets
hot water is running all of a sudden
making lots of noise
I find the rubber tube
with the water
amidst a tangle of tubes
tie a knot in it
try to hold it
until I can turn it off
at the wall
I can still hear the water running
but the black rubber hose
is disconnected and on the floor
I am trying to drain the water
from the tubs into cups and glasses
left over from the party
to keep the plants from dying
from over-watering
frantically running around
filling up cups
someone wakes up
is stumbling out to see
what all the commotion is about

Auditory Hallucinations

most often, knocking at the door
usually, soft tapping
occasionally, police-like pounding
sometimes, apocalyptic thunder
the earth quaking
breaking in two
or my name in casual conversation
my mother's insistent call
get up! wake up!
a lover's whisper
beside my head on the pillow
or an overheard curse
malicious gossip
barks of dogs
birdsongs
gull's cries
eagle's screams
purgatorial crickets in the room
the clicks of the spider's spinners
weaving a web
the moth's desperate sigh
the ravening avarice of the roach
dry lightning in the brain
with no thunder
just a charged silence
hanging in the absence
like a ghost

Vector: Robertson Davies' Deptford Trilogy :: Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams

The Cave of the Bear in the Manticore:

Ramsay's confessional narrative in Fifth Business advances from his instinctive repudiation of Presbyterian Christianity, through his infatuation with the miracles of his Fool Saint and his scholarly work on recognized saints, to a final position in which he pledges allegiance "to the mountain castle Sorgenfrie and the anima-ogre who lives there" as I expressed it earlier. In the Manticore, having completed his year-long Jungian analysis, David accompanies Liselotte into the bear cave where, "not less than seventy-five thousand years ago" men "sacrificed and at of the noblest thing they could conceive, hoping to share in its virtue, "and in that cave flings herself "face down before the skulls of bears" in fervent prayer before returning to Sorgenfrei for Christmas Day.  - From Aspects of Robertson Davies's Novels By Victor J. Lams

Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams

The soft, clay-like floor of the cave retains the paw prints of cave bears along with large, rounded, depressions that are believed to be the "nests" where the bears slept. Fossilized bones are abundant and include the skulls of cave bears and the horned skull of an ibex. - Wikipedia

Dudley Young's Origin of the Sacred

The one I want to murder has something that is mine (or that I absolutely intend to make mine) and the obvious way to achieve this is to incorporate him, enfold him in my arms and hug him "to death" in a closure of the visible. Thus the call-sign of the murderer is, as Othello said, "Put out the light," and its primitive conclusion is cannibalism. Mutilation, on the contrary, is only interested in the mutilated body as a vehicle for divine epiphany, which as the word suggests, is what appears between the mutilated flesh and the eye that beholds it....

There is some evidence for this conjecture from what we know of ritual cannibalism where the body is first mutilated, then incorporated. In Polynesia Captain Cook witnessed a human sacrifice that ended with the victim's left eye being presented to the lips of the king....

Thus concludes the argument that began... with my assertion that the mutilating cruelty that opens our eyes to the monstrous epiphanies of the sacrificial divinity is properly canceled, preserved, and redemptively transformed in the elaboration of a harness for the our sacrificial instincts, not in some rationalist attempt to close the door on them; and moreover that the harness is to be sought within those instincts, and not elsewhere.

The woman at the Memory Center:

You mother told me she has a nickname for you...

Resisting the urge to write this dream down

sitting next to a local female poet
idly updating contacts on my phone
her name comes up
I add information about her
from a passing conversation
we had with each other
I casually mention it to her
she becomes upset
thinking I am stalking her
I try to reassure her
but she will have none of it
another poet comes over to calm her
but the local poet is now scared and angry
gathers her things to leave
I tell her I never meant
to do anything to upset her

I felt a light touch upon my shoulder
waking my from the dream
I imagined the legs of a spider
but it was nothing

I lay there for a long while
resisting the urge to write this dream down

Vector: Lear and Jan Kott

Working through The Eating of the Gods by Jan Kott.

Also, working through King Lear, reading along with the Peter Brooks and Trevor Nunn productions.

Researching on Wikipedia:

The only two significant big-screen performances of Shakespeare's text date from the early 1970s: Grigori Kozintsev was working on his Korol Lir at the same time as Peter Brook was filming his King Lear. Brook's film starkly divided the critics: Pauline Kael said "I didn't just dislike this production, I hated it!" and suggested the alternative title "Night of the Living Dead". Yet Robert Hatch in The Nation thought it as "excellent a filming of the play as one can expect" and Vincent Canby in The New York Times called it "an exalting Lear, full of exquisite terror". The film drew heavily on the ideas of Jan Kott, in particular his observation that King Lear was the precursor of absurdist theatre: in particular, the film has parallels with Beckett's Endgame. Critics who dislike the film particularly draw attention to its bleak nature from its opening: complaining that the world of the play does not deteriorate with Lear's suffering, but commences dark, colourless and wintry, leaving (in Douglas Brode's words) "Lear, the land, and us with nowhere to go". Cruelty pervades the film, which does not distinguish between the violence of ostensibly good and evil characters, presenting both savagely. Paul Scofield, as Lear, eschews sentimentality: this demanding old man with a coterie of unruly knights provokes audience sympathy for the daughters in the early scenes, and his presentation explicitly rejects the tradition (as Daniel Rosenthal describes it) of playing Lear as "poor old white-haired patriarch".

Vectors: Finnegan's Wake and Hieronymous Bosch

Joyce | McLuhan | Bosch

Perhaps it is in the nature of the Wake itself, that to think of it is to realize it is everywhere. Searching for Campbell and Morton's Skeleton Key at Henderson's, pausing over Burgess' Re Joyce. No Skeleton Key. Purchasing McLuhan's Medium is the Massage and War and Peace in the Global Village. Scanning through War and Peace, noticing the annotations from FW. It can only be the Wake. It is.

French rêver: to dream

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Discussions of the zoetrope brought the discovery of Mat Collishaw's Garden of Unearthly Delights. Since then, several references to Bosch's masterwork.

This from War and Peace in the Global Village:

When print was new in the sixteenth century, Hieronymous Bosch painted the new confusion of spaces resulting from the Guttenberg technology invasion of the old tactile world of medieval iconography. His "horror" pictures are faithful are a faithful artistic report of the pain and misery that result from a new technology. 

A sense of the everything being underwater

practice of remembering dreams
waking up
developing mnemonics
returning to sleep and more dreams

a return to the room at east 53rd
with more windows
working out an elaborate payment plan
with sam
blinds pulled down
shadows of tree limbs
like puppet theater
upon the shades / blinds
watching old movies
in the room
sam spraying bug repellent
on all the surfaces
of his kitchen
trying to kill
tiny green lizards
a sense of the everything
being underwater

Preparing to play their roles

in a parking lot
trying to start a motorcycle
wearing tight green shorts
a group of women
smiling at my legs
saying they were sexy
then with an old girlfriend
she is procrastinating
starting her motorcycle
I get mine going and drive off
frustrated and free

in the tour guide's house
communal living
dorm type situation
all of us waiting
to either go on stage
go to battle
get into college
preparations being made
shelves with copies of Penguin classics
faced out and feathered with bookmarks
the tour guide putting on make-up
a lot of women in the house
I am on the verge of uncovering
a government conspiracy
but can't find a shirt to wear
or glasses
the cia took everyone's glasses
find a pair of optical underwater goggles
hanging on a barbed wire fence
still looking for a shirt
now there is a wedding to attend
we are on the east coast
everyone has already left for the west coast
a meeting at yosemite
part of the cover-up
secret meetings at national parks
running around the house
with no shirt on
mostly women everywhere
everyone getting ready
to do something
preparing to play their roles
backstage at a high school drama

The bridge becomes a ruined water wheel

leading a herd of cows
over a river
following a guide
I do not trust
we come to a bridge
broken down
rope with wood slats
I am trying
to get one poor cow
to finally cross over
in the middle
the bridge becomes a ruined water wheel
the cow sort of plops down
over it painfully
it slowly turns
to drop him
on the other side
I walk down to the river
sidestepping the waterwheel
there is a hobble horse there
who has been spooked
by the cattle
I untie his fetters
and feel
such a sense'
of love and relief

as I lay on the pallet / bed
I have made for myself
on the floor of my parents home
I think about a knife in the spine
then a knife in the heart
causing excruciating pain
however, because of how it is placed
to remove it
would kill me

Some gods are all guilty

difficult to wake up this morning
awoke several time in the night
head full of dreams
only to fall back
into the narcotic arms of sleep

perhaps I should have awakened
the first time
perhaps I slept too much

a sense of the gentle, insistent pressure
of the mind parasites
to relax, to sleep, to dream another dream
to not get up
to write it down
to just accept
life as it is

the voice of the adversary
whispering like a lover in my ear:

go back to sleep...
language working like a drug
hypnotic spells
words weaving worlds
my head heavy and foggy
thoughts moving glacially
through thick atmosphere
of the unconscious

stumbling towards an antidote

reading the Greeks
the high noon sunlight
of the culture
to burn away the dross
the broken marble column
the ghost of blood and madness
in the hills above Corinth

Jan Kott
The Eating of the Gods:
"Oh to be a stone!"

Heracles:
... Who killed these boys?

Amphitryon:
You and your bow and some gods are all guilty.

My face is nailed to my skull

The production of dreams
is without end
each one combining elements of the previous
melodies layering over each other
in intricate fugue patterns
creating astonishing meanings
with shimmering dimensionality
and breathtaking depth

The memory of dreams
at the moment of awakening
a chorus of characters
from every drama
all gathered on stage
to take the final bow
all still in costume
each waving to me
the lost love
the treacherous friend
the kind mother
the laughing teacher
the ghost of the father

I turn away from them
with such reluctance
I will never forget
what you have shown me tonight
each and every one of you
masterful life changing scenes
of myth and magic

I open my eyes
to an empty room
conscious memory
like a bright light
destroying the subtlety
ruining the shade
the perfect evening moments
the reading by moonlight
the ecstasy in the soft blue morning
burned away
in the harsh sudden light of consciousness

my name clangs like a bell within me
my face is nailed to my skull
the room is revealed
as real as a grey brick

I try to hold on
recover some sigil, symbol, token
of the vast epic
that unfolded within me
throughout the night
and have only a single scene:

a drab waiting room
filled with the sick and the the bored
nothing to read
no images on the walls
at one end
a frosted window
behind which a shadowy figure
calls out names
in a tired voice

i only know that
each name
is another aspect
of myself

Searching for what has been recently lost

Searching for what has been recently lost
neighborhood scenarios
with futuristic, high tech elements
I am in the role of a spy
using remote control cameras
to search through maps
trying to determine
which side of the highway
her house is located
she is confused
I am not sure
but I make a decision
with confidence
older men
cartel drug lords
are hiding something from me
send out their henchmen
I am taken back to a hotel
where one of them
inadvertently tells me her room number

Dreams by a flickering light

psychic vampires
children and old men
dreams by a flickering light
contained within the circle
of the zoetrope

I can tell it has a crush on me

the house on Princess
in Dallas
i am coaching football
the neighbor next door
has a dinosaur for a pet
in disguise
tells people it is a great dane
found it when it was a baby
it is kind of a serpent / brachiosaurus
has the ability to change its size
from huge to small
I am in the backyard
looking at the pool
which has been drained
by one of my mother's best friends
in an attempt to fix it
but I believe it is making it worse
not the sides of the pool are falling apart
I walk around the dismantled fence
the neighbor is out on the side yard
which is now water
I see a huge swell
and the dinosaur
leaps out to see me
I laugh and greet it
I can tell it has a crush on me
wow, the neighbor says, she really likes you
she follows me to the front
trying to flirt with me
i tell the neighbor that she hasn't been imprinted
that she needs direction
someone to show her
how to do the things dinosaurs do
then I head inside the house
and get ready to go to a party before the game

It no longer has any purpose

hanging out with a group of college kids
back to a dorm room
dancing and drinking
wearing a suit that was made fun of
everyone pairing off to have sex
not being able to join any of them
standing with the suit, unzipped
with an erection
everyone is looking at it
one guy punches it humorously
another photographs it
creates a 3D homunculus
in a jar
for a presentation
all of us passing out
trying to get back before a certain time
dream shift

a large city
Dallas, Chicago
a modern circus, exploratorium
there with a companion, AB
outside, under freeway overpasses
high tech
like a mall store
crowds of people
kids petting crocodiles teeth
she pulls away from me
I get irritated
watch a bivalve exhibit
tube fish and clams with shells opening
extending and withdrawing in murky waters
odd spider like creatures and cleaning devices
turn to next exhibit
look for the companion
she was dressed like Jacqueline Kennedy
from JFK assassination
believe I have lost her
kids are petting a giant serpent
hissing out air
its jaws bound with leather
up and incline
a man is throwing baseballs at a giant
still irritated, I walk to an intersection
more displays, shopping areas
oddly vacant
walk to an abandoned factory
find the companion
talk about our relationship
ask her if she wants to have a birthday party here
give her a tube fish in a plastic cup
it keeps rhythmically extending long feelers
then withdrawing
she seems excited, but then underwhelmed
consider just throwing the tube fish away
it no longer has any purpose

Two Bells Ringing

Reading The Bookman's Promise by John Dunning.
Pick up NYT Guide to Essential Knowledge, randomly reading.
Pause at the grammar in back.
Read the entry about modification to the word "unique."
To never modify unique.
How many months since I have looked at this book?
Moments later back to The Bookman's Promise.
There is a passage concerning modifications to unique.

The book concerns Sir Richard Burton.
Burundi coffee just came into the shop.
A map indicating it is the source of the Nile
The Search for the sources of the Nile.
The Mountains of the Moon.
Richard Burton was born on March 19th.

While the Monks were singing...

a box found, discovered, opened
a present, a recurring past
walking from the spillway at Gunstream
back towards the cabins, the boathouse
with a group of people, old friends, strangers
the sea levels falling
going back in time
a bridge now descending with the falling waters
a path into the middle of the lake
an island that wasn't there before
a house, a series of buildings
childhood homes and laboratories
something had been opened
a box found, a present
triggering a reaction with the past/ present
bubbling green ooze
the transformation of colors to bright orange
and then black
painting a wall, trying to clean up / hide
trying to dispose of the fluid
something feminine in it
the substance of Eros,
Desire
overflowing an urn
I am trying no to let it drip
taking it into the bathroom
contamination the water supply as it drips into the toilet
out in the street
the world is like a carnival
everyone possessed by the possibilities of the extraordinary
old friends from the bookstore walking on their hand in high places
I am not yet infected
or am utterly
the wisdom of women I have loved telling me so
the sense of reality unraveling
waking from the dream

in bed
ruminating
the story Han Chao Pass comes to mind
the gatekeeper
my grandfather taking me there as a child
seeing the Gate, the Wall
the Stories carved into it
what is beyond?
the Abyss

taking a drug that enables you to recreate reality
myself and another take it at the same time
two realities
everything in the power of the imagination
planets, galaxies, stars
universe, universes
expanding
and then the suffocating black emptiness of the Abyss
the failure of imagination
trying to remember if I am still holding the other's hand
vestiges of the reality before the drug
fading, now suspect
awakening

I pick up
In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
"I let a filthy mat of hair grow over my body,
 and donned the skin of a lion and roamed the wilderness."
opened at random
a man walking along hearing street musicians
beside a bridge
knowing he has only to hum to become a part
remembering when I was younger
my first experience of harmony
in a musical kindergarden
singing, I've been working on the railroad
flash to the motor of a music box
given to me years ago in an xmas stocking
just a couple of weeks ago
thinking of giving it as a present to someone else
turning the handle
trying to remember the tune
I've been working on the railroad
not knowing why, but deciding to keep it

remembering this
and the Gate and Han Chou Pass
and the first time I experienced Grace
at the Monastery of Christ in the Desert
while the monks were singing...