I return to the hotel after purchasing a backpack at the posh store, which is found to contain a bunch of women's handbags.
After spotting the peacock outside of the window, it tried to enter the hotel room. It sticks the long, featherlike proboscis on the tip of its beak through a hole in the window. I try to cut it off, but there aren't any sharp objects in the hotel room. The hole is far too small for the peacock to enter through, so I hope that it will get frustrated and eventually run off.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Monday, December 06, 2004
Punk Rock Karaoke was at the Holiday Inn and I was there singing "Holiday in Cambodia" with them. It was a very long dream.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Friday, October 08, 2004
I was Kerouac. Woke up around dawn, naked, looking either out window or in mirror. Ginsberg comes up behind me, naked, hardon, pokes my butt with it and says "Come on, man, let's go." I say "Man, I told you it's not my scene, I'm sorry." He sighs and berates me mildly. Something else happens but I forget what.
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Strange whirl of dreams. One: I'm a telepath. Possibly connected to two: JL, a girl I went to junior high with, is auditioning all the boys in the class to be her boyfriend (though it seems to be the current day). We are all lined up (or possibly sitting in rows) and she is sitting behind a large screen. When it's my turn I find that there's a poem written on the wall of the screen, which I am to read to her. Figuring I'm about to blow all the other goons away, I start reading, only to find that I'm somehow unable to read a complete line from start to finish: not only is my voice weak and scratchy but I'm physically incapable of doing it (the effect is like a needle trying to track over a scratched-up record). So I clear my throat and start over, this time reading the words top to bottom rather than left->right. Also, I lower my voice, cup her face in my hand, and read right into her ear. I am very impressed with my innovation in the face of danger and can only conclude that she is struggling to remain objective.
Three: centered on a bar and a job on some remote college campus where I work. A very popular form of speed that lets you determine exactly how many more hours you need to stay up. Robyn Hitchcock frequents the bar, and vomits. My girlfriend is there and accidentally kisses DH, who graduated from my college my freshman year and is undertaking a survey, which he has come to interview me for. The survey is one question involving the tenacity of toads as metaphor for something else, but I don't remember what.
Three: centered on a bar and a job on some remote college campus where I work. A very popular form of speed that lets you determine exactly how many more hours you need to stay up. Robyn Hitchcock frequents the bar, and vomits. My girlfriend is there and accidentally kisses DH, who graduated from my college my freshman year and is undertaking a survey, which he has come to interview me for. The survey is one question involving the tenacity of toads as metaphor for something else, but I don't remember what.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Fragment
I live in a wonderful old, wood and stone house. It looks, I don't know, tudor? Someone wants to use it in their advertising because it looks like the haunted castle
of their dreams. In fact they'd like to use the house for a film they are making.
I want to say yes, but remember that I don't own the house, I'm only renting it. I'll have to check with the landlord, I say.
I live in a wonderful old, wood and stone house. It looks, I don't know, tudor? Someone wants to use it in their advertising because it looks like the haunted castle
of their dreams. In fact they'd like to use the house for a film they are making.
I want to say yes, but remember that I don't own the house, I'm only renting it. I'll have to check with the landlord, I say.
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Went to sleep drunk & dreamed that Weird Al Yankovic had released a version of Sheena Easton's "Sugar Walls" called "Booger Walls."
Thursday, September 02, 2004
In one night:
1. Held prisoner in some kind of large dome, surrounded by all sorts of fancy mechanical anti-escape devices, we (where "we" = "me and two guys reminiscent of if not actually Han Solo [original action-figure costume] and Chewbacca") decide "Hey, why not try jumping out the window?"
2. Getting off the Fung Wah in winter, talking to extraordinarily streetwise six-year-old black kid, lying down under tractor trailer truck then worrying I'd get run over.
3. I had web-shooters, but they weren't very good.
1. Held prisoner in some kind of large dome, surrounded by all sorts of fancy mechanical anti-escape devices, we (where "we" = "me and two guys reminiscent of if not actually Han Solo [original action-figure costume] and Chewbacca") decide "Hey, why not try jumping out the window?"
2. Getting off the Fung Wah in winter, talking to extraordinarily streetwise six-year-old black kid, lying down under tractor trailer truck then worrying I'd get run over.
3. I had web-shooters, but they weren't very good.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
NIGHTMARE
"Tell me why you can't sleep,"
my mother says, and the white
Christmas trees sparkle and faintly
shiver. An ornament is in my hand,
smooth and hard: a wooden rabbit
with a hook at the top.
There is another man at our table:
thin and demure with silver eyes and grey hair.
"Finally I understand,"
he coos,
"How the soul moves from a small sick thing
on this plane towards something destined and vast
on the next." His voice is a limp breeze
blowing a plastic tarp. The rabbit
falls to the floor and breaks once at the neck,
and then again at the right ear.
I know someone is going to die. I'm afraid
that it's me.
Then I'm ophelia in viscous water,
haloed by motes of light and dead leaves.
Parts of me wash away towards some violent rift,
some maelstrom or drain.
Somewhere else, a real rabbit,
No,
a hare is running through a field, a storm breaks
behind him. Sheaves of grass whip the ground
like monks' flails. Desire is there, she is tall
and dark and holds a compound bow,
smooth and black like a stealth jet.
She pulls back the metal string and shoots
an arrow straight into the sun.
The light goes red.
Drops of blood fall from the sky.
I claw through layers of sleep,
through the thick water trying to scream:
a black bird is flying through canopies
of bare branches, frantic and bleeding.
Its heart beats as a silver coin spins
on its edge, now heads,
now tails; it hits open air
and twists through the wet night.
I am awake.
the rain is falling swiftly outside.
"Tell me why you can't sleep,"
my mother says, and the white
Christmas trees sparkle and faintly
shiver. An ornament is in my hand,
smooth and hard: a wooden rabbit
with a hook at the top.
There is another man at our table:
thin and demure with silver eyes and grey hair.
"Finally I understand,"
he coos,
"How the soul moves from a small sick thing
on this plane towards something destined and vast
on the next." His voice is a limp breeze
blowing a plastic tarp. The rabbit
falls to the floor and breaks once at the neck,
and then again at the right ear.
I know someone is going to die. I'm afraid
that it's me.
Then I'm ophelia in viscous water,
haloed by motes of light and dead leaves.
Parts of me wash away towards some violent rift,
some maelstrom or drain.
Somewhere else, a real rabbit,
No,
a hare is running through a field, a storm breaks
behind him. Sheaves of grass whip the ground
like monks' flails. Desire is there, she is tall
and dark and holds a compound bow,
smooth and black like a stealth jet.
She pulls back the metal string and shoots
an arrow straight into the sun.
The light goes red.
Drops of blood fall from the sky.
I claw through layers of sleep,
through the thick water trying to scream:
a black bird is flying through canopies
of bare branches, frantic and bleeding.
Its heart beats as a silver coin spins
on its edge, now heads,
now tails; it hits open air
and twists through the wet night.
I am awake.
the rain is falling swiftly outside.
Dying - in a hotel somewhere (possibly NH), folks staying nearby, called them: "this is it." Dad very reassuring, explained to him about the tradition of haiku poets & monks writing death poems, me pissed off because there were so many poems left to write.
Dying felt like trying to stay awake after not having slept for days. I was walking around (this was outside), stumbling, and pissing all over the place, figuring if I was dying I didn't really have to worry where I was pissing. My old coworker J walked by and I said "hey - oh never mind, you're on your way to work" and he said "I think I have a few minutes for a dying oaf" but then went to the office to drop his stuff off and didn't make it back.
Didn't die; woke up, of course - needing to pee, hand & wrist asleep. The beginnings of my death poem:
Dying felt like trying to stay awake after not having slept for days. I was walking around (this was outside), stumbling, and pissing all over the place, figuring if I was dying I didn't really have to worry where I was pissing. My old coworker J walked by and I said "hey - oh never mind, you're on your way to work" and he said "I think I have a few minutes for a dying oaf" but then went to the office to drop his stuff off and didn't make it back.
Didn't die; woke up, of course - needing to pee, hand & wrist asleep. The beginnings of my death poem:
Checked in
to check out
Thursday, August 26, 2004
It is war. The debris
of art, of the clothing
of the dead fly, mystical
over the town, black
soft mica shreds, black
with red sparks, black
the Wicked Witch of
the West inravels into
the sky a creation tale,
but the impact of all
this deadly art sinks
a crater into the ground
200+ people die therein,
it's the usual statistic
I find shelter, we tell
stories, I sleep, awakened
by a pack of unknown dogs
licking my face. Earlier
a deer wandered in to my
home such as it is and gave
birth to a camel or was it
a llama they look kind of
similar around the mouth
and head, and both carry
fatty deposits on their
backs; good for traveling
in regions lacking resources.
of art, of the clothing
of the dead fly, mystical
over the town, black
soft mica shreds, black
with red sparks, black
the Wicked Witch of
the West inravels into
the sky a creation tale,
but the impact of all
this deadly art sinks
a crater into the ground
200+ people die therein,
it's the usual statistic
I find shelter, we tell
stories, I sleep, awakened
by a pack of unknown dogs
licking my face. Earlier
a deer wandered in to my
home such as it is and gave
birth to a camel or was it
a llama they look kind of
similar around the mouth
and head, and both carry
fatty deposits on their
backs; good for traveling
in regions lacking resources.
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
From John Mulrooney:
A dream I had on April 19, 1994
29) Dream
I am at my desk at work and I take a call from David Koresh. I am trying to talk him out of the compound, but I am extremely sympathetic to his cause. We talk for some time until I hear on the side of the line the ATF agents breaking in and I know that it is all over. I hang up and open the drawer on the left hand side of my desk. I take out a piece of paper and take a magic marker from the container and write "Next door watching Waco burn" on it. I then take tape from the tape dispenser and post the note on my office door and go into Jon Marko's office where there is a television. I can see the fire engulfing the compound in Waco and Jon is seated at this desk with his feet up watching it. He is wearing blue jeans and a red button down shirt.
I do not make much of this dream, I simply get up and go to work as usual. It didn't even "feel" like a prophetic dream, not one I would ordinarily be compelled to write down. There is usually a feeling that accompanies a certain kind of dream, a feeling that it was sent, has origins outside of yourself, and must be written down. I didn't have this sense then. I went to work and several hours later hear a commotion in the streets. There has been a bomb scare at the JFK Federal Building and everyone who works there has been sent home, so the streets are filled with them. I hear that the Federal building in Oklahoma City has been hit, probably by the black Muslims,(who were the first reported culprits). I reach into my desk, on my left, take out a piece of paper and write "next door - Oklahoma) on it and tape it to my door. When I round the corner to Jon's office and see him with his feet up in a red shirt and blue jeans, I remember the previous night's dream.
A dream from the mid-1990s
Dream
I have this written down elsewhere in greater detail. I am walking through a very similar wood to the wood I walk through in many of these dreams. Except this time I am aware that I am at a fairground. Its still pretty thick though, woods wise. There will be a clearing every so often along the trails that is pretty spacious, but for the most part the woods around it are thick. There are little groups of people everywhere, some staying with the group, others mixing freely with the others. It is to be a convergence of all world religions and you see people of all stripes, some identifiable in their faith, others less so, there are a lot of Amish at one point and they are intersected by the Rosicrucians. There are hundreds of people along the trails all trying to get to the big meeting place. I come upon parking lots where groups of Orthodox Jews and Zoroastians and Hindus are getting out of their Minivans and SUVs and packing their coolers with food and water. The meeting point is apparently far away. I realize that I have to get there too, but also that I seem to have some sort of coordinator responsibility. I have a clipboard and items to check off. Jesuits walk by mixed in with Tibetan monks. Domincans and Witch Doctors trade information on the shortest route. I take off on a small trail into the woods, knowing that I am going the right way, well actually, it was never in question, I didn't know I was going the right way only because I hadn't thought to know it. The woods spread out some. I realize there is a figure walking behind me. I can imagine what the figure looks like: tall, maybe twelve feet, in a black cloth covering most of its body, also a hood of some sort, and possibly, a head shaped differently from a humans, but I couldn't tell. This is the figure who will help me with my task. I need to make sure there will be enough port-o-potties and parking and medical tents and all myriad types of logistical matters. The figure and I discuss the matters practically. After a while, I say "I know who You are…" sort of coy and sly, The figure grunts which I take to mean "Okay,…out with it", "You're the Muslim deity Allah" I turn and the figure shrugs as if to say "Okay, …you got me". The strange thing is, this doesn’t interfere with us one bit. I turn right around and go back to discussing the logistical plan.
A dream from the mid 1990s
5) Dream
I am going out to my brother's place of work to cover a shift for him. He still works at the Dedham Plaza, but it isn't really a liquor store, more of a coffee/convenience place. I show up and the shelves are pretty much bare. In fact, the entire store is empty with the exception of a bench at the back which has a automatic drip coffee maker on it and a small rack for doritoes. Underneath this is a small dorm type refrigerator. I realize that I will have to stock the store, but as I am the only employee I am a little afraid of leaving the place unattended (I don't know how I got in). I go to the front of the store to see if the coast is clear. I do this several times and sometimes that I go there, I am at the plaza and the parking lot is outside. Other times the store is in a mall that is entirely inside. I know I have to make a break for it when we are inside, because I need to stock the store with the fruit drinks that are in the drug store across the mall that only exists when we are in the "inside" mode. I make a couple of attempts but decide to go back before I get halfway across the mall. I seem to think that it's going to switch while I am halfway across. I get about halfway across one time and a janitor who is maybe 30 meters from me says "what are you afraid of? There's nobody else here. Go get the stuff, no one's going to come in." I decide to trust him and half because I had decided that and half because I didn't want it to appear that I was more worried about my existential dillema than the security of the store, I go across the mall and pick up a milk crate full of VeryFine products and little creamers. I make it back to the store and put the stuff away. It looks like there really aren't going to be many or perhaps any customers, so I decide to read a book. I take a stool out and place it in the middle of the floor. I begin to read a leatherbound book of Seamus Heaney's work that has charred pages and is written in Latin which I seem to understand. I get to one page (some titles are from Heaney's actual work, some I do not believe are) and there is a face on the page speaking to me. I have the sense that there is something demonic about this book and the face is muttering some incantation. I put the book down when I see that customers are entering. It turns out to be Fred Marchant and Alberto Mendez. They have come to me to settle a question about the work of Neruda. I don't remember what the questions was, but in the course of our conversation, I recite all of "Amor America" in Spanish. They leave after a while and I go back to "tending" the store. At what seems to be the end of the day the boss, Tony Terrazzi (a local Dedham gangster for whom my brother did work) comes back and complains about how I've been running things. I tell him not to give me a hard time because I run a company with a budget of…and I give him a figure (I forget it now, but I added up the entire budget of the department I then worked in the next day, Something I hadn't done before…I had it to the penny) I go to leave and get on the bus back towards Forest Hills and Jamaica Plain. I get off in a place that appears to be Franklin Park Zoo, or Jamaica Pond. I am watching two creatures who seem to be half wild boar, half stuffed animal and it is impossible for me to determine whether or not they are having sex or in mortal combat or both. They will claw into one another, one slash will rip flesh and send a splatter of blood across everyone there and the next will send some stuffing floating through the air. It is a chilling scene that I wake with. But the really weird part is that Todd, my roommate wakes at the same time (roughly 4:45 am) from a dream in which he was being chased as a possible murder suspect that ended in a place like Jamaica Pond (part of the emerald necklace park system which includes Franklin Park) where he could see across the pond two creatures that seemed not quite human having a violent sexual encounter, with people watching them. Likewise my roommate Dave had a dream that he couldn't remember the first part of but that it wound up at a place like Franklin Park where he saw me looking over a cage of animals that appeared to be humans with leather skin having a violent orgy. I tell him to look at this and isn't it great. Dave also woke from his dream at around 4:45 am.
A dream from the mid 1990s
3) Dream
Okay, so I am watching the Merv Griffin show and it is alternating between black and white and color…it is also not quite hosted by Merv Griffin…although he is the recognized svengali, he merely hangs back…visible only in occasional pan shots behind the band or waiting in the wings...most of the guests are introduced and interviewed by a former airplane mechanic who plied his trade on US service aircraft on his native American Samoa. And the lap steel/Hawaiian guitar player from the band has one of those heads of birds that you often see depicted on ancient Egyptian interiors, and is speaking about matters that I understand at the time, but am less clear on now. (He is Horus, I believe) The heart of his matter was allegorical and told through liberal use of stories of old Hollywood which he seems to know very well. At times it appeared he was a zen like Ed MacMahon or Paul Schaffer…being prodded by the mechanic with a one liner of the type that would probably only elicit a one-liner in response, but instead being met with a reflective sigh and followed with a long Homeric account of some starlets rise and fall or the jealousy and greed of some producer or the corruption of some would be writer into a hack. Occasionally, the bird creature would address me personally through the TV screen, mostly offering tips for lap steel playing, explaining tricks of the great Sol Hoopi or King Bennie Nawahi, both of whom he'd also coached. I t should be borne in mind that I watch this show on several tvs which are outside without any apparent source of power…I am walking through a swampy glen that has a fairly clear path and every ten feet or so there is another television hooked to a tree with this program on. It seems to be guiding me through. I eventually arrive at a trailer which has smoke coming out of the chimney and enter and wait for my sister who does arrive and it is apparently her trailer and she mentions something about the divorce between our parents and we make some food and sit down to watch the rest of the program. When we do so, all the people on the show, band (which is a huge jazz orchestra) cast and crew alike all sit down to eat the same dish from the same plates and glasses as us, The angle they eat at is such that their table appears to be an extension of ours. The bird head guy politely hanging his head down just a bit and covering his open beak with his hand….a consummate gentlebird
A dream I had on April 19, 1994
29) Dream
I am at my desk at work and I take a call from David Koresh. I am trying to talk him out of the compound, but I am extremely sympathetic to his cause. We talk for some time until I hear on the side of the line the ATF agents breaking in and I know that it is all over. I hang up and open the drawer on the left hand side of my desk. I take out a piece of paper and take a magic marker from the container and write "Next door watching Waco burn" on it. I then take tape from the tape dispenser and post the note on my office door and go into Jon Marko's office where there is a television. I can see the fire engulfing the compound in Waco and Jon is seated at this desk with his feet up watching it. He is wearing blue jeans and a red button down shirt.
I do not make much of this dream, I simply get up and go to work as usual. It didn't even "feel" like a prophetic dream, not one I would ordinarily be compelled to write down. There is usually a feeling that accompanies a certain kind of dream, a feeling that it was sent, has origins outside of yourself, and must be written down. I didn't have this sense then. I went to work and several hours later hear a commotion in the streets. There has been a bomb scare at the JFK Federal Building and everyone who works there has been sent home, so the streets are filled with them. I hear that the Federal building in Oklahoma City has been hit, probably by the black Muslims,(who were the first reported culprits). I reach into my desk, on my left, take out a piece of paper and write "next door - Oklahoma) on it and tape it to my door. When I round the corner to Jon's office and see him with his feet up in a red shirt and blue jeans, I remember the previous night's dream.
A dream from the mid-1990s
Dream
I have this written down elsewhere in greater detail. I am walking through a very similar wood to the wood I walk through in many of these dreams. Except this time I am aware that I am at a fairground. Its still pretty thick though, woods wise. There will be a clearing every so often along the trails that is pretty spacious, but for the most part the woods around it are thick. There are little groups of people everywhere, some staying with the group, others mixing freely with the others. It is to be a convergence of all world religions and you see people of all stripes, some identifiable in their faith, others less so, there are a lot of Amish at one point and they are intersected by the Rosicrucians. There are hundreds of people along the trails all trying to get to the big meeting place. I come upon parking lots where groups of Orthodox Jews and Zoroastians and Hindus are getting out of their Minivans and SUVs and packing their coolers with food and water. The meeting point is apparently far away. I realize that I have to get there too, but also that I seem to have some sort of coordinator responsibility. I have a clipboard and items to check off. Jesuits walk by mixed in with Tibetan monks. Domincans and Witch Doctors trade information on the shortest route. I take off on a small trail into the woods, knowing that I am going the right way, well actually, it was never in question, I didn't know I was going the right way only because I hadn't thought to know it. The woods spread out some. I realize there is a figure walking behind me. I can imagine what the figure looks like: tall, maybe twelve feet, in a black cloth covering most of its body, also a hood of some sort, and possibly, a head shaped differently from a humans, but I couldn't tell. This is the figure who will help me with my task. I need to make sure there will be enough port-o-potties and parking and medical tents and all myriad types of logistical matters. The figure and I discuss the matters practically. After a while, I say "I know who You are…" sort of coy and sly, The figure grunts which I take to mean "Okay,…out with it", "You're the Muslim deity Allah" I turn and the figure shrugs as if to say "Okay, …you got me". The strange thing is, this doesn’t interfere with us one bit. I turn right around and go back to discussing the logistical plan.
A dream from the mid 1990s
5) Dream
I am going out to my brother's place of work to cover a shift for him. He still works at the Dedham Plaza, but it isn't really a liquor store, more of a coffee/convenience place. I show up and the shelves are pretty much bare. In fact, the entire store is empty with the exception of a bench at the back which has a automatic drip coffee maker on it and a small rack for doritoes. Underneath this is a small dorm type refrigerator. I realize that I will have to stock the store, but as I am the only employee I am a little afraid of leaving the place unattended (I don't know how I got in). I go to the front of the store to see if the coast is clear. I do this several times and sometimes that I go there, I am at the plaza and the parking lot is outside. Other times the store is in a mall that is entirely inside. I know I have to make a break for it when we are inside, because I need to stock the store with the fruit drinks that are in the drug store across the mall that only exists when we are in the "inside" mode. I make a couple of attempts but decide to go back before I get halfway across the mall. I seem to think that it's going to switch while I am halfway across. I get about halfway across one time and a janitor who is maybe 30 meters from me says "what are you afraid of? There's nobody else here. Go get the stuff, no one's going to come in." I decide to trust him and half because I had decided that and half because I didn't want it to appear that I was more worried about my existential dillema than the security of the store, I go across the mall and pick up a milk crate full of VeryFine products and little creamers. I make it back to the store and put the stuff away. It looks like there really aren't going to be many or perhaps any customers, so I decide to read a book. I take a stool out and place it in the middle of the floor. I begin to read a leatherbound book of Seamus Heaney's work that has charred pages and is written in Latin which I seem to understand. I get to one page (some titles are from Heaney's actual work, some I do not believe are) and there is a face on the page speaking to me. I have the sense that there is something demonic about this book and the face is muttering some incantation. I put the book down when I see that customers are entering. It turns out to be Fred Marchant and Alberto Mendez. They have come to me to settle a question about the work of Neruda. I don't remember what the questions was, but in the course of our conversation, I recite all of "Amor America" in Spanish. They leave after a while and I go back to "tending" the store. At what seems to be the end of the day the boss, Tony Terrazzi (a local Dedham gangster for whom my brother did work) comes back and complains about how I've been running things. I tell him not to give me a hard time because I run a company with a budget of…and I give him a figure (I forget it now, but I added up the entire budget of the department I then worked in the next day, Something I hadn't done before…I had it to the penny) I go to leave and get on the bus back towards Forest Hills and Jamaica Plain. I get off in a place that appears to be Franklin Park Zoo, or Jamaica Pond. I am watching two creatures who seem to be half wild boar, half stuffed animal and it is impossible for me to determine whether or not they are having sex or in mortal combat or both. They will claw into one another, one slash will rip flesh and send a splatter of blood across everyone there and the next will send some stuffing floating through the air. It is a chilling scene that I wake with. But the really weird part is that Todd, my roommate wakes at the same time (roughly 4:45 am) from a dream in which he was being chased as a possible murder suspect that ended in a place like Jamaica Pond (part of the emerald necklace park system which includes Franklin Park) where he could see across the pond two creatures that seemed not quite human having a violent sexual encounter, with people watching them. Likewise my roommate Dave had a dream that he couldn't remember the first part of but that it wound up at a place like Franklin Park where he saw me looking over a cage of animals that appeared to be humans with leather skin having a violent orgy. I tell him to look at this and isn't it great. Dave also woke from his dream at around 4:45 am.
A dream from the mid 1990s
3) Dream
Okay, so I am watching the Merv Griffin show and it is alternating between black and white and color…it is also not quite hosted by Merv Griffin…although he is the recognized svengali, he merely hangs back…visible only in occasional pan shots behind the band or waiting in the wings...most of the guests are introduced and interviewed by a former airplane mechanic who plied his trade on US service aircraft on his native American Samoa. And the lap steel/Hawaiian guitar player from the band has one of those heads of birds that you often see depicted on ancient Egyptian interiors, and is speaking about matters that I understand at the time, but am less clear on now. (He is Horus, I believe) The heart of his matter was allegorical and told through liberal use of stories of old Hollywood which he seems to know very well. At times it appeared he was a zen like Ed MacMahon or Paul Schaffer…being prodded by the mechanic with a one liner of the type that would probably only elicit a one-liner in response, but instead being met with a reflective sigh and followed with a long Homeric account of some starlets rise and fall or the jealousy and greed of some producer or the corruption of some would be writer into a hack. Occasionally, the bird creature would address me personally through the TV screen, mostly offering tips for lap steel playing, explaining tricks of the great Sol Hoopi or King Bennie Nawahi, both of whom he'd also coached. I t should be borne in mind that I watch this show on several tvs which are outside without any apparent source of power…I am walking through a swampy glen that has a fairly clear path and every ten feet or so there is another television hooked to a tree with this program on. It seems to be guiding me through. I eventually arrive at a trailer which has smoke coming out of the chimney and enter and wait for my sister who does arrive and it is apparently her trailer and she mentions something about the divorce between our parents and we make some food and sit down to watch the rest of the program. When we do so, all the people on the show, band (which is a huge jazz orchestra) cast and crew alike all sit down to eat the same dish from the same plates and glasses as us, The angle they eat at is such that their table appears to be an extension of ours. The bird head guy politely hanging his head down just a bit and covering his open beak with his hand….a consummate gentlebird
Monday, June 28, 2004
Thursday, June 24, 2004
Some sort of reenactment of the Illiad (by way of the film) involving S, my girlfriend from college. In a position in the woods being advanced upon by soldiers in dense waves. I shoot arrows into the rushing throng, until they are upon us at which point I remove an arrow from the quiver and start stabbing with that.
Wake up howling, to which R, half asleep, says, "You're a ghost."
Fall back asleep and then C.R. is talking about hearing the battle from his house, where, for some reason, also lives Robert Creeley. "Creeley heard the sounds in the woods, said he could hear the hissing of the arrows like a strong wind."
That's about all I remember.
Wake up howling, to which R, half asleep, says, "You're a ghost."
Fall back asleep and then C.R. is talking about hearing the battle from his house, where, for some reason, also lives Robert Creeley. "Creeley heard the sounds in the woods, said he could hear the hissing of the arrows like a strong wind."
That's about all I remember.
Friday, June 18, 2004
First: my girlfriend and I were both brand new professors at some small college in NH. Since we were new we both had to teach in the same room at the same time. There were two chalkboards perilously close together and our boss was there to observe us. I had apparently been hired to teach Meteorology and was nervous because I didn't know shit about it.
Second: In bar in Boston w/Mark - a barbershop/bar. I for haircut before some event, him keeping me company. I am shown to several barber's chairs but it takes forever. While in chair 3 very cute vaguely hipsterish yuppies start smelling Mark's shoulder - he has pretzels in the shoulder pocket of his jacket and they are attracted by the scent. Mark & I are bemused. I'm moved to the bar itself for my haircut but still doesn't come so I'm given a shot of whiskey. One of the cute women says we're "such cute things" or something to that effect. I ask her what she would say if we described them thus. The cute 2 think nothing of it but the third, who is homelier and nicer, says "it would imply that I'm just going to go home and go to bed" mkeaning objectifying them which was my point. Mark meanwhile is hanging out with Aaron Kiely and Jason Noble and other hipsters. We might be in NYC. I'm watching the Video Music Awards to see the Beastie Boys protest. Mark joins us (the homely one and me) and says he saw that Fuckhead's stereo was worth $5 grand. I explain Fuckhead and his stereo to the girl and say we should sell it. It's a really old boombox with detachable speakers and a walkman. Still no haircut. We watch the Beastie Boys and I manage to clear my throat of what was irritating it, which turns out to have been two small pieces of glass.
Second: In bar in Boston w/Mark - a barbershop/bar. I for haircut before some event, him keeping me company. I am shown to several barber's chairs but it takes forever. While in chair 3 very cute vaguely hipsterish yuppies start smelling Mark's shoulder - he has pretzels in the shoulder pocket of his jacket and they are attracted by the scent. Mark & I are bemused. I'm moved to the bar itself for my haircut but still doesn't come so I'm given a shot of whiskey. One of the cute women says we're "such cute things" or something to that effect. I ask her what she would say if we described them thus. The cute 2 think nothing of it but the third, who is homelier and nicer, says "it would imply that I'm just going to go home and go to bed" mkeaning objectifying them which was my point. Mark meanwhile is hanging out with Aaron Kiely and Jason Noble and other hipsters. We might be in NYC. I'm watching the Video Music Awards to see the Beastie Boys protest. Mark joins us (the homely one and me) and says he saw that Fuckhead's stereo was worth $5 grand. I explain Fuckhead and his stereo to the girl and say we should sell it. It's a really old boombox with detachable speakers and a walkman. Still no haircut. We watch the Beastie Boys and I manage to clear my throat of what was irritating it, which turns out to have been two small pieces of glass.
Friday, June 11, 2004
I found a small dog that looked lost. I tried to read its tag but the thing kept moving around I said, "is your name Cutie?" I decided it was & told tom we had to take Cutie back to our house & call the owners. But it turns out Cutie was a talking dog & not named "Cutie" at all. He said "my name is Biscuit!". okay sure. tom was worried that Biscuit & our cats would not get along so I came up with the ingenious idea of hiding him in a hotel linen closet. The only problem was that at that moment the hotel was hosting an event that looked like Reagan's funeral. Lots of old dudes with buzz cuts in uniforms. Some how we were able to sneak by the top brass & get Biscuit in this little crawl space under a buffet table. Lots of other stuff happened too including chase scenes through the hotel lobby...but in the end Biscuit's owner showed & they were happy to see each other.
Friday, June 04, 2004
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
There aren't any accessible laundromats in the greater Brattleboro area, they are all either closed or the washers and driers are all broken. Even the one in the 7-11 which is some kind of automated old-school affair whereby the dirty clothes are put through a series of wringers and dunkers. This is irksome because I have a large, heavy bag of dirty laundry. I am supposed to meet G in town in a couple of hours. I finally stumble upon the campus center of some unnamed university and find a functioning version of the old-school washer like from 7-11. There is a Dork, however, who is using the equipment, and moving quite slowly. I try to explain to the Dork that I have to meet someone in town very soon and I need to do my laundry, so could I please have a turn at the machine. Drunk with power, and perhaps bitter that he has no appointments of his own, the Dork will not grant me egress to the machine. I decide it is a lost cause and will walk into town to meet G (I am already an hour late). On the way into town, dragging the bag of laundry behind me, I encounter a nude one-armed man who has no face and a pair of sewn-on buttons in the place where his eyes should be and also his nipples. I try to communicate to him, but he seems oblivious.
I reach the family theme-dining restaurant where I am supposed to be meeting G. I find her table where she is seated with a bunch of people I don't recognize. She's wearing some kind of shiny red plastic stockings and sitting in the lap of a morbidly obese man. She seems irked that I am an hour late, and apparently takes her revenge by making out periodically with the morbidly obese man. End of dream.
I reach the family theme-dining restaurant where I am supposed to be meeting G. I find her table where she is seated with a bunch of people I don't recognize. She's wearing some kind of shiny red plastic stockings and sitting in the lap of a morbidly obese man. She seems irked that I am an hour late, and apparently takes her revenge by making out periodically with the morbidly obese man. End of dream.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
I was in a shopping mall, shopping. That's it. The only thing that differentiated the dream shopping mall from a real-life shopping mall was that there was a Macy's-sized department store geared exclusively for black people.
I found a tie that I liked at the department store for black people. I bought the tie.
I found a tie that I liked at the department store for black people. I bought the tie.
I was starting to get ideas for writing songs again. I ran into my friend Shu from high school and said "I think I'm going to start writing songs again, do you want to play some with me?" He was interested but noncommittal. I explained that I was thinking they might sound like a mix of three bands, but the only one I can remember is "a male Sleater-Kinney!" For some reason that phrase became the (unfortunate) way the project was described throughout the rest of the dream, though I knew it made me look like a dummy.
Oddly enough, when I woke up not only did I have S-K's "Turn it On" in my head but also "The Harder They Come," the Dead Milkmen's "Jellyfish Heaven," and "Fishheads," though I'm reasonably certain they weren't the other elements of my dream project.
And! the dream may have taken place somewhere in Mesopotamia.
Oddly enough, when I woke up not only did I have S-K's "Turn it On" in my head but also "The Harder They Come," the Dead Milkmen's "Jellyfish Heaven," and "Fishheads," though I'm reasonably certain they weren't the other elements of my dream project.
And! the dream may have taken place somewhere in Mesopotamia.
Friday, May 21, 2004
I was moving to NYC into an apartment with AT's friend BH. I was perplexed because the apartment actually seemed large and cheap. There was a mangy grey and white cat which spat at me though. My desktop G4 had somehow contracted a virus from HBS, whereby hundreds and hundreds of little Harvard "Veritas" shields covered the screen. I was anxious about getting the tech guys to fix it before I moved away from Boston.
Monday, May 10, 2004
Tom & I were on the skids & then he told me he was pregnant. (Freud field day I know!) I was pissed off about it & went charging through the streets of some east coast city...it was raining...got lost in a Wolworth's...someone was chasing me down a stairwell...for some reason I was looking for a puddle to wash my face in. Had to go back to Santa Fe. Had lunch with a group of sterotypical girlfriends who had tons of advice. The police were looking for a criminal. Chris Stroffolino said he'd give me a ride to Santa Fe. I was crying & very confused.
Saturday, May 01, 2004
A dream about the undead in 3 parts
the un-dead in his family
ancestry, in archive
in portraiture
their look, in you
a pursed likeness
hawkish deviltry
and show me other rooms
open for the viewing public
where with resource
and valor spent old films
render popcorn air
then to my paiute cousin I say
meet me where
i'll be working under my car
fell
almost asleep
on the oily earth
but for the open trunk
of that old continental
its wrapt contents shape
a body i think, shall i
unwrap it -- who
can sleep in this prescience
anyway, it's not good
what 24-hour gas station
is this: a chevron, old
coat of arms
where are you?
i'm guessing a body in there
can i borrow that phone
give her a call
where is
she?
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Thursday, April 22, 2004
1. Gave my manuscript to Carolyn Forché, who did a really great job editing it. She took out all the articles and pronouns.
2. A very long dream with Ron Silliman in it, but I don't remember what happened.
2. A very long dream with Ron Silliman in it, but I don't remember what happened.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Two nights ago: I was in a class being taught or T.A.'d by N (with whom I had a brief, stupid relationship), which was fine until I forgot to do an assignment and she had to reprimand me. Tim Midgett from Silkworm was also in the class, but he wasn't very helpful.
Last night: lots of dreams with faces from the past. In college with all the clowns from junior high. Parties. Big old house, arriving late? Just wanting to be left alone? Vivid then, gone now.
Last night: lots of dreams with faces from the past. In college with all the clowns from junior high. Parties. Big old house, arriving late? Just wanting to be left alone? Vivid then, gone now.
Monday, April 12, 2004
Thursday, April 08, 2004
I was walking around the town I grew up in with Miss (Laurel) Peterson, my "pre-first" teacher (one of the only teachers I liked before 10th grade). Somehow we were the same age. The town may have been post-apocalyptic, or we both may just have been bummed out to be there. I asked her where she was from and she said "San Francisco." I said "I've always thought that was a better place for girls to grow up than for boys."
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Fragments:
i look out the window / the catholic
church doors are open / no the whole
front wall of the church is gone
the service open to the public it's
a baroque performance / you can watch
it from the street / a pageant
it's kind of magnificent
in the church / food a feast / stolen
met someone / you were with me
women washing dishes in the church
kitchen / wearing only bras and slips!
they gossip / it's no big thing
i tell him / this is too much
i look out the window / the catholic
church doors are open / no the whole
front wall of the church is gone
the service open to the public it's
a baroque performance / you can watch
it from the street / a pageant
it's kind of magnificent
in the church / food a feast / stolen
met someone / you were with me
women washing dishes in the church
kitchen / wearing only bras and slips!
they gossip / it's no big thing
i tell him / this is too much
Monday, April 05, 2004
(shoulda done this first thing this morning...but here goes)
Tom & I were wandering around a big factory/school in the desert. We were trying to get outside, but we kept ending up in these refinery/foundry-like settings. Finally we made it to a beach...with rocks you could swim to. A dear friend of mine was sitting on one of the rocks making (?) tee-shirts I think...she had also painted this wonderful watercolor of the factory...but in her rendering it looked like a beauiful old victorian house.
I had to go to the dentist. Someone gave me an address & convoluted instructions. I had to be buzzed into the office. When I got to the reception desk I was told that the doctor was out for another hour. I had Winnie (my cat) with me. Then it was like a dentist/vet visit. I sat down & read magazines...I kept losing track of Winnie. Then she kinda attacked a little kid. (this is probably due to the fact that winnie was sleeping on my head & expressing her feline love for me by resting her claws on my forehead). A good deal of time passed...the waiting room was getting really full. I threw a little mini tantrum at the receptionist. Then the doctor/vet showed up and went in her office with one of the people waiting. A woman next to me asked why I was there & I was stumped. I couldn't remember if I was there for winnie or me.
Tom & I were wandering around a big factory/school in the desert. We were trying to get outside, but we kept ending up in these refinery/foundry-like settings. Finally we made it to a beach...with rocks you could swim to. A dear friend of mine was sitting on one of the rocks making (?) tee-shirts I think...she had also painted this wonderful watercolor of the factory...but in her rendering it looked like a beauiful old victorian house.
I had to go to the dentist. Someone gave me an address & convoluted instructions. I had to be buzzed into the office. When I got to the reception desk I was told that the doctor was out for another hour. I had Winnie (my cat) with me. Then it was like a dentist/vet visit. I sat down & read magazines...I kept losing track of Winnie. Then she kinda attacked a little kid. (this is probably due to the fact that winnie was sleeping on my head & expressing her feline love for me by resting her claws on my forehead). A good deal of time passed...the waiting room was getting really full. I threw a little mini tantrum at the receptionist. Then the doctor/vet showed up and went in her office with one of the people waiting. A woman next to me asked why I was there & I was stumped. I couldn't remember if I was there for winnie or me.
#1. Am giving 3 readings in some kind of large shopping mall. I have a bunch of conflicting documents stating the location and time of each reading. I am nervous because John Ashbery is supposed to be at one of the readings, for reasons that are not entirely clear. I stop into a restaurant of some kind to ask directions, only it is not a restaurant, but rather a sinister looking office with dark paneled walls and shiny floors. At a dark desk with a blue light above his head, Darth Vader style, is John Ashbery circa 1975. I ask him if he knows what time the reading is at and he says he doesn't know anything about any reading.
#2. I am employed by a University or School or something and for some reason G. is also employed by said institution. I go to visit her and ask what she is doing and she says she is researching "protocols for cloning" and that she only has 20 hours to finish up the project she is working on. I'm supposed to go somewhere to write this poem in several days and she agrees to accompany me. For some reason her father seems to have something to do with my being employed by this particular institution. The poem is called "Salomé of the Woods"
The trip to the woods takes place ala some kind of public transportation, though it looks kind of like one of those trains from the Edaville Railroad. Things at this point get kind of confusing. The poem itself is some kind of period piece, and I and my companion, who seems to have turned into K. and some sort of professor or "narrator" and another male companion seem to be simultaneously outside and inside the narrative at the same time. We are all in period garb a-lá Gangs of New York. There is some dispute over the portioning of some kind of food which we are eating, the male companion having consumed more than his fair share of the food (which looks something like barley or wheatberries). This results in an argument whereby the companion struts off into the forest in a huff. When the companion does not return, we go to try and find him. His severed head is found staked to a tree a short distance away. The professor explains that the forrest is haunted, and that I am responsible for the death of the companion for prompting him to go off alone into the haunted forest. I argue that it is the narrator's fault since he did not disclose to me the fact that the forrest was haunted.
"Oh but I did," the narrator explains, "but you didn't hear me because you were paying too much attention to K."
I ask K if this is true and she says that it is. "But you're the one who's narrating this thing, so therefore aren't you responsible for the acts which occur."
The narrator argues that he is an uninvolved third party and that I, ultimately, am responsible for the events which occur, which are also some how in the poem. He argues that ultimately I am the projenitor of the whole affair. At which point I state that if I am the creator of the events that occurred, then ultimately I answer to no-one since, being the creator of the situation, I am more or less absolved of guilt. The narrator argues that a textual murder is still a murder. I grab him by the hair and bash his head into a tree, causing his glasses to shatter and poke out his eyes. End of dream.
[OK, I feel the need to make a few comments. One, I've never read Salomé, though I do know there is some kind of severed head involved. Two, the events which occur in the woods in the dream take place in a state of complete unreality, it is clear to me in the dream that what is happening is part of a text of my own design. (Yes, I'm trying to account for that fact that my subconcious bashed some poor intolocutor's head into a tree. Three, I suppose I will have to write the "Salomé of the Woods Poem."]
#2. I am employed by a University or School or something and for some reason G. is also employed by said institution. I go to visit her and ask what she is doing and she says she is researching "protocols for cloning" and that she only has 20 hours to finish up the project she is working on. I'm supposed to go somewhere to write this poem in several days and she agrees to accompany me. For some reason her father seems to have something to do with my being employed by this particular institution. The poem is called "Salomé of the Woods"
The trip to the woods takes place ala some kind of public transportation, though it looks kind of like one of those trains from the Edaville Railroad. Things at this point get kind of confusing. The poem itself is some kind of period piece, and I and my companion, who seems to have turned into K. and some sort of professor or "narrator" and another male companion seem to be simultaneously outside and inside the narrative at the same time. We are all in period garb a-lá Gangs of New York. There is some dispute over the portioning of some kind of food which we are eating, the male companion having consumed more than his fair share of the food (which looks something like barley or wheatberries). This results in an argument whereby the companion struts off into the forest in a huff. When the companion does not return, we go to try and find him. His severed head is found staked to a tree a short distance away. The professor explains that the forrest is haunted, and that I am responsible for the death of the companion for prompting him to go off alone into the haunted forest. I argue that it is the narrator's fault since he did not disclose to me the fact that the forrest was haunted.
"Oh but I did," the narrator explains, "but you didn't hear me because you were paying too much attention to K."
I ask K if this is true and she says that it is. "But you're the one who's narrating this thing, so therefore aren't you responsible for the acts which occur."
The narrator argues that he is an uninvolved third party and that I, ultimately, am responsible for the events which occur, which are also some how in the poem. He argues that ultimately I am the projenitor of the whole affair. At which point I state that if I am the creator of the events that occurred, then ultimately I answer to no-one since, being the creator of the situation, I am more or less absolved of guilt. The narrator argues that a textual murder is still a murder. I grab him by the hair and bash his head into a tree, causing his glasses to shatter and poke out his eyes. End of dream.
[OK, I feel the need to make a few comments. One, I've never read Salomé, though I do know there is some kind of severed head involved. Two, the events which occur in the woods in the dream take place in a state of complete unreality, it is clear to me in the dream that what is happening is part of a text of my own design. (Yes, I'm trying to account for that fact that my subconcious bashed some poor intolocutor's head into a tree. Three, I suppose I will have to write the "Salomé of the Woods Poem."]
Sunday, April 04, 2004
I haven't fed my pet rat for a long, long time. He looks shriveled and skinny. I am furious at myself for forgetting to feed him for so long. And I can't find the rat food and I'm afraid to ask my mother where it is because then she will know how long it's been since I fed the rat. Ultimately, though I ask and she tells me where it is. I get the food and notice as I am taking it out of the bag with my hands that there are bugs in it. I don't have any other food, so I tell myself "rats eat bugs anyway."
Friday, April 02, 2004
I was in a town either west or north of the city, crashing at Phil's place. He and his roommate were having a weekend-long party but I wasn't there for it, just crashing. I was sleeping in somebody's room and in the morning kept waking up long enough to find a pen and paper to scribble down dream-poems. But I couldn't find a working pen and my eyes were too heavy to open long enough to tell my notebook from his, so I just kept falling asleep on my plans to write a series of poems involving the name "Phil."
Friday, March 26, 2004
#1
I was on a school field trip in Rome. We had been divided up in groups of 4 to give presentations on...something. It was Tuesday & my group was scheduled to present on Thursday morning. Somehow I missed the part where we divided up tasks & in my absence I'd been assigned to sing an Ella Fitzgerald song (not sure which one, but it was fast tempo with lots of scatting) in front of a big audience. Unfortunately for me I only knew a handful of the words. But fortunately there was a library nearby where my prof. had put much of the relevant media on reserve. I went to the library which was packed with kids from my class all listening to things on headphones. I found the Ella Fitzgerald track on LP which was a big relief 'cause all the other kids were hogging up the CD players. I saw a record player on the other side of the library & started walking towards it. When I got about 10 feet away this heavy metal guy swooped in and put a metallica record on & started jamming out to it. I sat patiently to the side waiting for him to be done. But then I realized that he wasn't doing an assignment he was just listening to music for fun. I explained my situation to him & asked if I could use the record player for 20 minutes, just to copy down the lyrics & then I'd be done. He said "no problem". (WOKE UP DUE TO A BAD CASE OF NIGHT SWEATS)
#2
I'm standing in front of a huge crowd of people & I the music starts & I am suppose to sing some Ella Fitzgerald song that I don't know the words to because I woke up right when that nice kid was gonna let me use the record player. I realize I am dreaming & then Julia Child is there & she is giving me a hug. I am smoking a cigarette on a roof deck looking over the charles river at night, it feels like spring.
I was on a school field trip in Rome. We had been divided up in groups of 4 to give presentations on...something. It was Tuesday & my group was scheduled to present on Thursday morning. Somehow I missed the part where we divided up tasks & in my absence I'd been assigned to sing an Ella Fitzgerald song (not sure which one, but it was fast tempo with lots of scatting) in front of a big audience. Unfortunately for me I only knew a handful of the words. But fortunately there was a library nearby where my prof. had put much of the relevant media on reserve. I went to the library which was packed with kids from my class all listening to things on headphones. I found the Ella Fitzgerald track on LP which was a big relief 'cause all the other kids were hogging up the CD players. I saw a record player on the other side of the library & started walking towards it. When I got about 10 feet away this heavy metal guy swooped in and put a metallica record on & started jamming out to it. I sat patiently to the side waiting for him to be done. But then I realized that he wasn't doing an assignment he was just listening to music for fun. I explained my situation to him & asked if I could use the record player for 20 minutes, just to copy down the lyrics & then I'd be done. He said "no problem". (WOKE UP DUE TO A BAD CASE OF NIGHT SWEATS)
#2
I'm standing in front of a huge crowd of people & I the music starts & I am suppose to sing some Ella Fitzgerald song that I don't know the words to because I woke up right when that nice kid was gonna let me use the record player. I realize I am dreaming & then Julia Child is there & she is giving me a hug. I am smoking a cigarette on a roof deck looking over the charles river at night, it feels like spring.
Monday, March 22, 2004
I had hired a young band of wily detectives to investigate a break-in at my house. We gathered up all the house members & sat around telling them about the numerous times the house had been broken into and what was stolen. This took close to 3 hours. At some point it turned into a party. The detectives kept getting up to get each other beers from the 'fridge & someone sparked a joint. I got really frustrated by this & snapped at someone.
Then it was Thanksgiving & I was coming out of the polling station in Berkeley (don't know what I was voting for...hopefully an Native American president) & I ran into an ex-boyfriend & an ex-housemate both named Scott. I found this very amusing. They were not amused. I invited them both back to my house for thanksgiving dinner.
At the house a full party/wake was in swing. Everyone was in black & some extended relatives were crying. I had this scrawny excuse for a turkey (free=range of course!) which I popped in the oven. I got self conscious about the front yard which need to be raked. I went out front to find my hired band of detectives sitting on couches drinking beers & started picking up after them which kinda ticked me off. My friend Elliot showed up & I told him there was beer inside. A lot of time passed I raked the yard & then had a couple cold ones with the detectives. Forgot about the turkey. Remembered the turkey and went running inside to pull it almost burnt to a crisp out of the oven. Wanted to make some stuffing but could not find a pan. Got pissed and left. It started raining. I saw this display outside a store that had this huge ostrich like birds perched inside it. One kinda attacked me but then let me scratch its neck.
I was trying to parallel park but kept ending up near red curbs.
Then it was Thanksgiving & I was coming out of the polling station in Berkeley (don't know what I was voting for...hopefully an Native American president) & I ran into an ex-boyfriend & an ex-housemate both named Scott. I found this very amusing. They were not amused. I invited them both back to my house for thanksgiving dinner.
At the house a full party/wake was in swing. Everyone was in black & some extended relatives were crying. I had this scrawny excuse for a turkey (free=range of course!) which I popped in the oven. I got self conscious about the front yard which need to be raked. I went out front to find my hired band of detectives sitting on couches drinking beers & started picking up after them which kinda ticked me off. My friend Elliot showed up & I told him there was beer inside. A lot of time passed I raked the yard & then had a couple cold ones with the detectives. Forgot about the turkey. Remembered the turkey and went running inside to pull it almost burnt to a crisp out of the oven. Wanted to make some stuffing but could not find a pan. Got pissed and left. It started raining. I saw this display outside a store that had this huge ostrich like birds perched inside it. One kinda attacked me but then let me scratch its neck.
I was trying to parallel park but kept ending up near red curbs.
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Friday, March 12, 2004
From Tim Peterson:
"Stuffing books into my satchel. No one really said it was okay to take them, but I figure just a few…several large bags later, I'm loaded down and ready to depart.
Look at Emma – she's rich but she lives in that miniscule stand-up shack hardly big enough for a closet, and sleeps on that pallet made out of crates. We are watching this as if at a slide lecture. She seems to just live there and tend her farm, but one night all the lights go on and we see her crying in her real house, which is a mansion. She's crying in the stairwell, screaming at someone on the phone.
My cousin is moving in with some friends downtown. It sounds like a burgeoning romance from how she tells it. Downtown Boston is nightmarish, full of very tall brick skyscrapers – everything also very new and shiny. She is moving in with Frank Bidart and his family. Everyone knows that Frank Bidart isn't the real revolutionary – Robert Bly is, because he’s the one with Mexican blood, in fact he looks somewhat like Cheech Marin and is trying to reassemble the Vietnam poets despite the fact that Denise Levertov is dead this time. But no one's listening to him. Frank Bidart is the one who takes the stage and wags his finger at us talking about "Bush's doublespeak" – I imagine he must look sexy when he does that. My cousin likes him I think it's not clear whether they are romantically involved or whether she is just moving in. We walk by the spot downtown, and she points it out – a tall, teetering sliver of a red brick building so narrow it looks like it will fall over, like it was an add-on stuck into the posh neighborhood as a kind of afterthought. There will be an explosion at the rally, we all know and fear this.
Emma is there, at the rally, the same spunky blonde, who has now dyed her hair black and is speaking with a southern accent she didn't have before. The accent allows her a new way to be the phallus, and she shows it off with gusto. She has also started smoking and all the girls think she's soooo sexy. Several of her "followers" tell me this as we wait for her to come down. The room is very crowded and somehow it's very apparent that treachery will strike and a bomb will go off within seconds, set by Mexican Robert Bly.
I want to surprise B. and show him what I look like in drag, but I don't want him to be attracted to me, but I want to show him I look good in drag. So I ask him to wait downstairs for about ten minutes. He is in an irritated mood. I get up to my room and realize I haven’t shaved my legs. There is really no hope for this idea, and it turns out he got tired of waiting anyway and drove away, the hotel clerk tells me later. In the morning, I go out to window-shop at all the junk shops and $1 dollar stores in the area. There are rusty bedframes, odd springs and gadgets, whole aisles full of used nails and screws and L-brackets, plastic buckets, goggles, those cheap picnic tables with the sun umbrella that you stick in the hole in the middle, curvy straws, wigs, old lawnmowers, a veritable bazaar of used and useless stuff. I wonder why I didn't just come and buy everything when I was first moving in here. I guess I didn't have the patience.
As I'm getting into the elevator with Frank Bidart, it becomes clear that someone is going to assassinate him.
I am talking with an old man who looks like Joe Robinson, but he's not Joe Robinson, he's really just an old man. He has these guys working on his house (he's related to blonde Emma, but I can’t make out whether he's her father or her husband). He lost his house in the fire, he tells me, and would like to rebuild it, but doesn’t know if he can trust the guys he hired. Asks me to follow them while he spends days in the library reading Popular Mechanics and xeroxing articles from it. One day I come by the house and look around. They are clearly incompetent. They have begun at the top of the wall and are moving down toward the bottom. So far, they have built a kind of brick trim several layers thick around the top edge of where the wall will be. The clustered sections do not meet. Held in place by wire, they float there, teetering individually. Now and then a brick falls and goes thunk into the ground. I am not sure how I found this out, but the men are ex-cons. I go back to tell Emma this, and since I have been doing such a good job there, she says I can look around at the bookshelves and let her know if I see anything I like. Scene ends with me going through stacks and stacks of bookshelves, taking this book, this book, this book, putting them into a bag. Some of them aren’t even books I want – they’re just on a good press, like the one called "The Limp Dolphin" whose cover looks like "The Changing Light at Sandover" and is by an author I’ve never heard of before, but I figure what the heck good references. I am taking too many books and it is quite clear I will not be able to drag these home. For some reason K. has appeared and is helping me choose them: "You might…like this one over here…Tim." She is wearing all black as usual, and I assume she has been working with me at Emma's house or is it bookstore? Anyway, I don't want to take the really expensive books because I want Emma to stay in business, so I put back the ones I have selected that are in sealed plastic bags. I am still afraid I won’t be able to move with these huge bags. I have taken too many books, and need to run away with them before Emma returns and notices the empty shelves…
"Stuffing books into my satchel. No one really said it was okay to take them, but I figure just a few…several large bags later, I'm loaded down and ready to depart.
Look at Emma – she's rich but she lives in that miniscule stand-up shack hardly big enough for a closet, and sleeps on that pallet made out of crates. We are watching this as if at a slide lecture. She seems to just live there and tend her farm, but one night all the lights go on and we see her crying in her real house, which is a mansion. She's crying in the stairwell, screaming at someone on the phone.
My cousin is moving in with some friends downtown. It sounds like a burgeoning romance from how she tells it. Downtown Boston is nightmarish, full of very tall brick skyscrapers – everything also very new and shiny. She is moving in with Frank Bidart and his family. Everyone knows that Frank Bidart isn't the real revolutionary – Robert Bly is, because he’s the one with Mexican blood, in fact he looks somewhat like Cheech Marin and is trying to reassemble the Vietnam poets despite the fact that Denise Levertov is dead this time. But no one's listening to him. Frank Bidart is the one who takes the stage and wags his finger at us talking about "Bush's doublespeak" – I imagine he must look sexy when he does that. My cousin likes him I think it's not clear whether they are romantically involved or whether she is just moving in. We walk by the spot downtown, and she points it out – a tall, teetering sliver of a red brick building so narrow it looks like it will fall over, like it was an add-on stuck into the posh neighborhood as a kind of afterthought. There will be an explosion at the rally, we all know and fear this.
Emma is there, at the rally, the same spunky blonde, who has now dyed her hair black and is speaking with a southern accent she didn't have before. The accent allows her a new way to be the phallus, and she shows it off with gusto. She has also started smoking and all the girls think she's soooo sexy. Several of her "followers" tell me this as we wait for her to come down. The room is very crowded and somehow it's very apparent that treachery will strike and a bomb will go off within seconds, set by Mexican Robert Bly.
I want to surprise B. and show him what I look like in drag, but I don't want him to be attracted to me, but I want to show him I look good in drag. So I ask him to wait downstairs for about ten minutes. He is in an irritated mood. I get up to my room and realize I haven’t shaved my legs. There is really no hope for this idea, and it turns out he got tired of waiting anyway and drove away, the hotel clerk tells me later. In the morning, I go out to window-shop at all the junk shops and $1 dollar stores in the area. There are rusty bedframes, odd springs and gadgets, whole aisles full of used nails and screws and L-brackets, plastic buckets, goggles, those cheap picnic tables with the sun umbrella that you stick in the hole in the middle, curvy straws, wigs, old lawnmowers, a veritable bazaar of used and useless stuff. I wonder why I didn't just come and buy everything when I was first moving in here. I guess I didn't have the patience.
As I'm getting into the elevator with Frank Bidart, it becomes clear that someone is going to assassinate him.
I am talking with an old man who looks like Joe Robinson, but he's not Joe Robinson, he's really just an old man. He has these guys working on his house (he's related to blonde Emma, but I can’t make out whether he's her father or her husband). He lost his house in the fire, he tells me, and would like to rebuild it, but doesn’t know if he can trust the guys he hired. Asks me to follow them while he spends days in the library reading Popular Mechanics and xeroxing articles from it. One day I come by the house and look around. They are clearly incompetent. They have begun at the top of the wall and are moving down toward the bottom. So far, they have built a kind of brick trim several layers thick around the top edge of where the wall will be. The clustered sections do not meet. Held in place by wire, they float there, teetering individually. Now and then a brick falls and goes thunk into the ground. I am not sure how I found this out, but the men are ex-cons. I go back to tell Emma this, and since I have been doing such a good job there, she says I can look around at the bookshelves and let her know if I see anything I like. Scene ends with me going through stacks and stacks of bookshelves, taking this book, this book, this book, putting them into a bag. Some of them aren’t even books I want – they’re just on a good press, like the one called "The Limp Dolphin" whose cover looks like "The Changing Light at Sandover" and is by an author I’ve never heard of before, but I figure what the heck good references. I am taking too many books and it is quite clear I will not be able to drag these home. For some reason K. has appeared and is helping me choose them: "You might…like this one over here…Tim." She is wearing all black as usual, and I assume she has been working with me at Emma's house or is it bookstore? Anyway, I don't want to take the really expensive books because I want Emma to stay in business, so I put back the ones I have selected that are in sealed plastic bags. I am still afraid I won’t be able to move with these huge bags. I have taken too many books, and need to run away with them before Emma returns and notices the empty shelves…
Sunday, March 07, 2004
Sunday, February 29, 2004
My inability to get along with my father and stepmother is compromising my ability to fight the aliens.
I am arguing with my stepmother that piling phonebooks in front of the doors is futile because the aliens have the ability to walk through the walls. Now is not the time to be crafting beadwork coverings for the furniture.
When two aliens enter the house, I am unable to find any items which will function as weapons, so I have to strangle them. The aliens are green and their skin is sticky like dough. Their eyes are empty sockets. I wonder why it is that the aliens are considered to be so dangerous when their necks snap so easily. However, I know that when two more aliens return to the house, they will be armed with needleguns so I decide to take my chances outside.
Outside, attack planes which look like Transformers are screeching through the skies, looking for aliens. I begin to get nervous as I realize that I'm unable to run due to my wounded leg. I begin searching for structures in which to take refuge, but I can't find any.
Boy am I sick of these anxiety dreams...
I am arguing with my stepmother that piling phonebooks in front of the doors is futile because the aliens have the ability to walk through the walls. Now is not the time to be crafting beadwork coverings for the furniture.
When two aliens enter the house, I am unable to find any items which will function as weapons, so I have to strangle them. The aliens are green and their skin is sticky like dough. Their eyes are empty sockets. I wonder why it is that the aliens are considered to be so dangerous when their necks snap so easily. However, I know that when two more aliens return to the house, they will be armed with needleguns so I decide to take my chances outside.
Outside, attack planes which look like Transformers are screeching through the skies, looking for aliens. I begin to get nervous as I realize that I'm unable to run due to my wounded leg. I begin searching for structures in which to take refuge, but I can't find any.
Boy am I sick of these anxiety dreams...
Thursday, February 26, 2004
I am alarmed that the Holderlin translation I have seems to differ from B's. She says "You have to pinch your arm when you are reading it so you can approximate what the poet was feeling when he wrote it."
We are somewhere with a group of people who are donning white clothes for an expedition into the woods behind the house I grew up in. The idea is that if everyone wears white, people can be spotted easily. I decide that I need to buy supplies for the expedition, so I find myself in K-mart.
I am waiting in the checkout line, attempting to buy a metal heart-shaped box containing a bunch of topological maps. The cashier decides that I have been stealing things, so she demands to make a search of my bag. I grudgingly agree and she begins to take the items out of my bag one by one. She removes a condom and says,
"What's this?"
"It's a condom," I say, "do you need a demonstration?"
The cashier is flustered by this and begins to put the items back in my bag one by one, including the metal heart-shaped box. I leave without paying for it.
I return to the people in white who are about to enter the woods. I'm slightly apologetic for the fact that I am wearing a grey cable-knit sweater and not white.
"You are a thief so you keep to the shadows," one of them answers.
We enter the woods and eventually come across what somebody calls the "graveyard of kites," scores of kites hang from the trees like spanish moss. This is where all of the kites go when they snap their strings, I think to myself.
We proceed further into the woods and reach what appears to be a conventional graveyard. I notice a headstone which bears the name "John Ashcroft." The words "Mars Falls in 2025" are written in blood on the headstone.
In an area where there are some benches, my father and my maternal grandfather are having some kind of argument. I'm confused as to what the dispute is about.
We are somewhere with a group of people who are donning white clothes for an expedition into the woods behind the house I grew up in. The idea is that if everyone wears white, people can be spotted easily. I decide that I need to buy supplies for the expedition, so I find myself in K-mart.
I am waiting in the checkout line, attempting to buy a metal heart-shaped box containing a bunch of topological maps. The cashier decides that I have been stealing things, so she demands to make a search of my bag. I grudgingly agree and she begins to take the items out of my bag one by one. She removes a condom and says,
"What's this?"
"It's a condom," I say, "do you need a demonstration?"
The cashier is flustered by this and begins to put the items back in my bag one by one, including the metal heart-shaped box. I leave without paying for it.
I return to the people in white who are about to enter the woods. I'm slightly apologetic for the fact that I am wearing a grey cable-knit sweater and not white.
"You are a thief so you keep to the shadows," one of them answers.
We enter the woods and eventually come across what somebody calls the "graveyard of kites," scores of kites hang from the trees like spanish moss. This is where all of the kites go when they snap their strings, I think to myself.
We proceed further into the woods and reach what appears to be a conventional graveyard. I notice a headstone which bears the name "John Ashcroft." The words "Mars Falls in 2025" are written in blood on the headstone.
In an area where there are some benches, my father and my maternal grandfather are having some kind of argument. I'm confused as to what the dispute is about.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Internet dream: Bookslut confesses she has a crush on me, but the picture she sends me is of Jessamyn West. I am too confused to address the discrepancy before waking up.
Also: I met Alice James and was pleasantly surprised to find out that her son is Richard D. James. Funny how things work out.
Also: I met Alice James and was pleasantly surprised to find out that her son is Richard D. James. Funny how things work out.
Monday, February 16, 2004
I've paid a visit to my old eye doctor, who my family no longer sees due to a variety of small personal fallings-out, because I fear something is horribly wrong with my vision (that is, everything is really blurry) and I'm looking for both familiarity and anonymity. Most of my time is spent waiting to see him, or waiting for the results. Finally right before I wake up he says he knows what's wrong. And then I wake up.
Best line from the dream: Dr. Helfman says "And what makes you so sure opthamalogy is the solution to your problems?"
Best line from the dream: Dr. Helfman says "And what makes you so sure opthamalogy is the solution to your problems?"
Friday, February 13, 2004
For some reason I'm in the Navy. Am on board a small frigate or something of some kind, which docks at some kind of floating base. The base itself looks like some kind of locker room and pitches violently with the rocking of the sea.
Those of us who disembark here are to wait until another ship comes to pick us up. One of the other soldiers on the base tells me that this could be "For enlisted men, anytime between 10 and 20 years." I try to explain to him that I am not, in fact, an enlisted man but have been drafted.
In the interior of the base I meet a female officer who, by way of greeting, puts her tongue in my ear.
There is also some kind of indoor pool. Suddenly, I am seized by some kind of illness whereby tiny red worms begin to emerge squiggling from my pores. Obviously this puts me in a state of extreme distress. I run to the bathroom to vomit, but the base is pitching so violently that the toilet has become completely vertical and I cannot reach it. At about this point I wake up.
Those of us who disembark here are to wait until another ship comes to pick us up. One of the other soldiers on the base tells me that this could be "For enlisted men, anytime between 10 and 20 years." I try to explain to him that I am not, in fact, an enlisted man but have been drafted.
In the interior of the base I meet a female officer who, by way of greeting, puts her tongue in my ear.
There is also some kind of indoor pool. Suddenly, I am seized by some kind of illness whereby tiny red worms begin to emerge squiggling from my pores. Obviously this puts me in a state of extreme distress. I run to the bathroom to vomit, but the base is pitching so violently that the toilet has become completely vertical and I cannot reach it. At about this point I wake up.
Thursday, February 12, 2004
In some kind of gondola above a city with my high school crush. The city itself is more like one of those fabricated city streets you find in an amusement park. In fact, the entire city seems to be an amusment park of sorts.
She explains that the city is falling apart from the edges toward the middle and I can see the buildings and things in ruins near the horizon. Nobody seems to want to address the question of what will happen when it gets to the part of the city that we are presently in.
Then the dream metamorphosizes into one of those "I'm back in high school because my high school degree was determined to be invalid" dreams.
She explains that the city is falling apart from the edges toward the middle and I can see the buildings and things in ruins near the horizon. Nobody seems to want to address the question of what will happen when it gets to the part of the city that we are presently in.
Then the dream metamorphosizes into one of those "I'm back in high school because my high school degree was determined to be invalid" dreams.
Sitting around with someone debating the rumors that Henry Gould is dead. Neither of us really know him, nor do we have particularly strong feelings about him, but we wonder.
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Earlier in the century, I'm in Egypt? researching some ancient find. There is another team of investigators competing with me. Lots of stone tablets, the most important and powerful one of which has a post-it over the text which says "burns eyes when read." I struggle with the temptation to read it. There are hordes of natives and lots of chaos. A cross between Raiders of the Lost Ark and Call of Cthulhu.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
Saturday, February 07, 2004
The invisible man is back. At certain moments he is me, and at others someone else. We are involved in some kind of conspiracy which involves blowing up the boiler room of my high school, which in this instance is some kind of giant flea-market, and escape on some kind of yacht.
I am in some kind of book group with kids from my high school. The big kids haven't done the reading. I am eating my cereal. I decide that the bowl I am using is much too small, so I look in some kind of cupboard and discover a bowl which, to my delight, is much larger.
Suddenly thick black smoke and ash begins to spurt out of a chimney which I can see outside the window of the book group. The building shakes a little bit. I know that the invisible man has done his appointed task. The big kids look excited because they are going to get out of school. Suddenly the invisible man reappears beside me, grey hat first (looks kind of like B.L.'s hat) and then his face which is covered in blue paint.
"To the boat, mon vieux," he says...
I am in some kind of book group with kids from my high school. The big kids haven't done the reading. I am eating my cereal. I decide that the bowl I am using is much too small, so I look in some kind of cupboard and discover a bowl which, to my delight, is much larger.
Suddenly thick black smoke and ash begins to spurt out of a chimney which I can see outside the window of the book group. The building shakes a little bit. I know that the invisible man has done his appointed task. The big kids look excited because they are going to get out of school. Suddenly the invisible man reappears beside me, grey hat first (looks kind of like B.L.'s hat) and then his face which is covered in blue paint.
"To the boat, mon vieux," he says...
Friday, February 06, 2004
In the second part of the dream, Marilyn Monroe is on trial. For what I don't know, but I suspect it has something to do with Martha Stewart. Marilyn emerges from the courthouse looking tired and old, but still somehow beautiful. I want her autograph. We all want something from her. I try to get her to sign a piece of paper. But she wants to charge me $85 for it! I'm so disappointed.
I'm in a new city or town with Mike Skinner. Dusk is approaching. I'm hungry. He says "Grab something to eat/
Maccy D's or KFC?" I say "What about something a bit less corporate and disgusting?" He says "Only one choice in the city." The dream then goes on to other things, but I can't remember what they are.
Maccy D's or KFC?" I say "What about something a bit less corporate and disgusting?" He says "Only one choice in the city." The dream then goes on to other things, but I can't remember what they are.
From Gina Myers:
The Dare
The first room is a ghost—another’s hand pressed into your hand.
You, a lost Alice, tumbling and tumbling through the dark
woods, your new dress ruined.
In the first room you are your own heroine running
and running and never looking back.
The second room: a coffin. You trace
the chalk marks on the wall, and with each step
a new face, a new story to be told. You remember waiting.
Sometimes there would be food. Sometimes
there was nothing. You remember
the chalk on the lapel:
the x x for mental defect.
The third room is a fever. You rest against the door, your palms
pressed flat against the wood surface.
The third room never tells. The third room burns
right through you. The third room
is a dream.
The Dare
The first room is a ghost—another’s hand pressed into your hand.
You, a lost Alice, tumbling and tumbling through the dark
woods, your new dress ruined.
In the first room you are your own heroine running
and running and never looking back.
The second room: a coffin. You trace
the chalk marks on the wall, and with each step
a new face, a new story to be told. You remember waiting.
Sometimes there would be food. Sometimes
there was nothing. You remember
the chalk on the lapel:
the x x for mental defect.
The third room is a fever. You rest against the door, your palms
pressed flat against the wood surface.
The third room never tells. The third room burns
right through you. The third room
is a dream.
From a reader:
It's (as you can see) not "my" dream but every time I do remember my dreams (none recently) they always seem to start with these lines echoing in my head. This is how dreams always arrive:
"And I was gripped by that deadly phantom
I followed him through hard jungles
As he stalked through the back lots
Strangling through the night shades
The thief of life
Moved onwards and outwards to love..."
(The Clash, "Death is a Star")
It's (as you can see) not "my" dream but every time I do remember my dreams (none recently) they always seem to start with these lines echoing in my head. This is how dreams always arrive:
"And I was gripped by that deadly phantom
I followed him through hard jungles
As he stalked through the back lots
Strangling through the night shades
The thief of life
Moved onwards and outwards to love..."
(The Clash, "Death is a Star")
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
9/4/03
I was riding on this ferry in the middle of a violent storm. It was getting tossed around like a cork, and the cars on the interior were being crashed into each other like in Cremaster 3. I remember wondering if I was going to die. Then a woman who identified herself as "an anthropologist" said, "you have to get off of the boat, there's an island over there and you have to go to it." The island was this sort of half pile of rocks, half glacier. There was a gate or a tunnel or something in it. The tunnel led to this place which I understood in some vague sense to be another dimension or another universe or something. There was some sense of it being "better" somehow. There were these long banquet tables and the people there were practitioners of some kind of weird religion.
M. was there. I was only there for a little while, and then things moved back to the ferry boat. It was more or less the same except all the cars were ruined piles of junk, but there were these leaflets tucked under the windshield wipers, which I understood to be somehow put there by the practitioners of the religion from the island. There were torpedoes and exploed shells and things lying around. I was trying to find my bags and stuff in the wreckage, but there was some understaning that the captain of the boat had stolen them and then abandoned ship.
I was riding on this ferry in the middle of a violent storm. It was getting tossed around like a cork, and the cars on the interior were being crashed into each other like in Cremaster 3. I remember wondering if I was going to die. Then a woman who identified herself as "an anthropologist" said, "you have to get off of the boat, there's an island over there and you have to go to it." The island was this sort of half pile of rocks, half glacier. There was a gate or a tunnel or something in it. The tunnel led to this place which I understood in some vague sense to be another dimension or another universe or something. There was some sense of it being "better" somehow. There were these long banquet tables and the people there were practitioners of some kind of weird religion.
M. was there. I was only there for a little while, and then things moved back to the ferry boat. It was more or less the same except all the cars were ruined piles of junk, but there were these leaflets tucked under the windshield wipers, which I understood to be somehow put there by the practitioners of the religion from the island. There were torpedoes and exploed shells and things lying around. I was trying to find my bags and stuff in the wreckage, but there was some understaning that the captain of the boat had stolen them and then abandoned ship.
3/1/00
Walking down a country road with C. & K. We're talking about various things, or attempting to at least. K keeps dropping names I don't know and mentioning poetic movements I've never heard of. Whenever I ask him about one of them he starts spelling out the name of the person, movement, or whatever.
After a bit, we are trying to figure out what to do. C. mentions a church of some kind in Rockville that is doing poetry readings. K. says "Yes, lets go, I hear there's a Joagburg poetry reading there."
"A what?" I ask him.
He starts to spell: "J...O...A..." And I blow up.
"I don't care how it's fucking spelled, just tell me what it is!" I shout.
"It's a group of bearded poets," K. snaps, "Poets who have beards. Why are you attacking me? Is it some sort of petty jealousy because I'm in graduate school and you're not?"
"Why do you keep name-dropping and patronizing? Do you want to prove how smart you are? You're only in grad. school so you can pick up chicks."
Then we're standing on a grassy hill. I say to K., "Is any desire or motive ever pure? In the end does Buddha forgive us?"
We continue walking in silence, we come to a road which leads to my mom's house in Connecticut. In each of the neighbors' yards there is a large red dog. They look kind of like those dogs in the "Blue Dog" paintings except they are red and their eyes are big and yellow. They are growling at us.
Walking down a country road with C. & K. We're talking about various things, or attempting to at least. K keeps dropping names I don't know and mentioning poetic movements I've never heard of. Whenever I ask him about one of them he starts spelling out the name of the person, movement, or whatever.
After a bit, we are trying to figure out what to do. C. mentions a church of some kind in Rockville that is doing poetry readings. K. says "Yes, lets go, I hear there's a Joagburg poetry reading there."
"A what?" I ask him.
He starts to spell: "J...O...A..." And I blow up.
"I don't care how it's fucking spelled, just tell me what it is!" I shout.
"It's a group of bearded poets," K. snaps, "Poets who have beards. Why are you attacking me? Is it some sort of petty jealousy because I'm in graduate school and you're not?"
"Why do you keep name-dropping and patronizing? Do you want to prove how smart you are? You're only in grad. school so you can pick up chicks."
Then we're standing on a grassy hill. I say to K., "Is any desire or motive ever pure? In the end does Buddha forgive us?"
We continue walking in silence, we come to a road which leads to my mom's house in Connecticut. In each of the neighbors' yards there is a large red dog. They look kind of like those dogs in the "Blue Dog" paintings except they are red and their eyes are big and yellow. They are growling at us.
3/11/99
With my father, staying at his house. One area is closed off at night by four sliding walls. We eat dinner, he orders me a beer. On the way to his house I encounter somebody else's "property," in the woods, which is populated by cats which are mangy and of various peculiar colors. At dinner we decide to vacation somewhere, at a campground which has a woods in back which contains some kind of special spot with cliffs and water where I enjoy swimming. I am pleased by this. I find a slim book of poetry with a picture on the front: a beach with some kind of manmade bridge or enclosure on the right side of the frame.
I say to my father, "Do you recognize this place?" I expect him to recognize it, but he doesn't.
With my father, staying at his house. One area is closed off at night by four sliding walls. We eat dinner, he orders me a beer. On the way to his house I encounter somebody else's "property," in the woods, which is populated by cats which are mangy and of various peculiar colors. At dinner we decide to vacation somewhere, at a campground which has a woods in back which contains some kind of special spot with cliffs and water where I enjoy swimming. I am pleased by this. I find a slim book of poetry with a picture on the front: a beach with some kind of manmade bridge or enclosure on the right side of the frame.
I say to my father, "Do you recognize this place?" I expect him to recognize it, but he doesn't.
September 21: Dream
Of travel over water,
my companion and I walk
a wooden causeway
down the middle
of a still lake, on either side reflected
trees are a corridor
of leafy barbells;
she is shiv-thin and brazen
like me.
After the water we ascend
a mountain, leave my father behind
in barren strata, her hand
where it ought to be, a bone flower
on my palm now where the air
is thin and our stories true.
This is for what we were made, descending
towards the lights of the town
where it is Christmas Eve
again and I have stolen her
from her family only to erupt
into my own: huddled
'round a mangy conifer, silent
aunt, silent uncle, only the
collie makes a noise, stripping
sour meat from a bone, no one
can think of anything.
Tin balls hang breathless
as we shimmer in.
This is all I've ever wanted:
to leave them there with the poinsettia
spears that the dog might eat,
only nineteen
I keep mouthing to myself
and to her torso now
unsheathed, breasts so small
I wonder how I'm going
to kiss them, her sounds
barely stifled infiltrate the Hallmark
cards strung on twine outside.
We lie together, stories implicit
in sweeps of hair, the skin
on the arm's hinge where creases
frame our music.
Waking to the dolor of a new day,
my heart is still swollen, rising
from those I can no longer love
towards a face I cannot name,
renewed by false serendipity,
these beloved shadows, moving
like smoke does
through a cloud.
Of travel over water,
my companion and I walk
a wooden causeway
down the middle
of a still lake, on either side reflected
trees are a corridor
of leafy barbells;
she is shiv-thin and brazen
like me.
After the water we ascend
a mountain, leave my father behind
in barren strata, her hand
where it ought to be, a bone flower
on my palm now where the air
is thin and our stories true.
This is for what we were made, descending
towards the lights of the town
where it is Christmas Eve
again and I have stolen her
from her family only to erupt
into my own: huddled
'round a mangy conifer, silent
aunt, silent uncle, only the
collie makes a noise, stripping
sour meat from a bone, no one
can think of anything.
Tin balls hang breathless
as we shimmer in.
This is all I've ever wanted:
to leave them there with the poinsettia
spears that the dog might eat,
only nineteen
I keep mouthing to myself
and to her torso now
unsheathed, breasts so small
I wonder how I'm going
to kiss them, her sounds
barely stifled infiltrate the Hallmark
cards strung on twine outside.
We lie together, stories implicit
in sweeps of hair, the skin
on the arm's hinge where creases
frame our music.
Waking to the dolor of a new day,
my heart is still swollen, rising
from those I can no longer love
towards a face I cannot name,
renewed by false serendipity,
these beloved shadows, moving
like smoke does
through a cloud.
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