second-half of 2 dreams

YEAH   ---   take that to bed   ---   see what sleeping on it would buy . . .

--   Alright!  he liked that

YER ON!

. . . that was enthusiastic!     

                                           heading off to bed

his head in his hands like a fullback ramming the ball up the gut on a fourth and inches

YER ON!

full bore

then he laid down laid there working on it  thinking it over turning it over hard   pondering   ae     ea  what was the parcel the word  the mutant

surely he wasnt going to let it slip him

he could remember it them   he could   gawddamn him if he didnt

                                                                                             jet black sleep enveloped him

dreaming

a series of dreams 

 

not that he could hold onto the earliest ones  torn to pitiful tatters in his fingers as his dreaming raced through dimensions  irreal  possessed   or of himself when he hadnt become who he was now   

        the person he was who preceded him

no  he couldnt hold onto them

                                      

he scarcely recalled a residence  wood-slatted  homey  lawns  shrubs  flower beds    

unearthed bulbs  scattered coffee grounds  fat black carpenter ants infesting an crooked crippled apple tree still trying to throw blossoms against the insects its virus   cancer

   

these vaporous bits postcards film broke like thin ash and were buried behind the last dream he dreamt

a bunny hutch
he actually saw the words somewhere in the dream                                                                                     

he liked bunnies 
he was walking on a city sidewalk  Bunny Hutch  there it was!  a paper advertisement slapped and glued to the back of a bus bench   

the air smelled like rain 
it was evening
the streets were black  they could have been wet or rain hung pregnant above his head  out of sight above lower clouds whose bellies were painted by the citys lighting  bleached by yellow metrolight emanating from the tall elongated  elastic  streetlamps

he caught the address on the ad  Michigan 
he was on Michigan 
by its number it was four blocks north

 

he liked bunnies

a sharpedged modern building beating it away from the street in a cleft  chevronshaped
no overhead lighting 
small path lights
amber beacons 
slick toadstools

a pebbled aggregate sidewalk leading the way off the city street  its traffic sparse
a few cars pawing  rearing like agitated horses  loathsome to be out and not in their stalls
fresh watered and hayed

the walkway descended by a small degree  discernable only when he glanced back over his shoulder and saw that he was looking into the second storey windows of the building across the street over the curbs lip

looking back over his shoulder he recognised a shadow attended him  along beside his 
a masculine V-shaped shadow  twinned his though several meters longer 
then  looking to see what cast it   that thing disappeared
its shadow fluttered  and like dandelion seeds dispersed  was gone in a sliver of a moment

Alone
a loner

though not as if he ever felt in tandem or walked among others

Alone
it felt good

he hadnt paused or stopped walking after witnessing the presence  its shadow
the path hadnt stopped descending 
 

he found his way to the mouth of the building

its superstructure rose like a dagger threatening the sky

and turning  standing before it face on  he immediately felt a coolness on his face and at his back
he felt empty space 
how empty space sometimes feels like eyes watching you  watching undisclosed  secretive  leering 
he shivered  he turned halfexpecting the presence that accompanied him to have reappeared

there was nothing behind him
an enormous openness
                                       adverse to the urban cloister surrounding them
it was beyond a short wall and tubular copper railing that acquired a patina greening

walking up to the rail  beneath the fat empty air  lay a subterranean courtyard
it artfully conceived  filled with raised beds plants saplings winding paths and discrete benches
  

at his left was a broad staircase which descended into the garden 
its treads and risers elaborately wide and shallow affixed to a sheer face of stone plates

beneath the overhang he stood atop soft lighting illumination fluttered  like a candlelight or coloured wraiths winging their separate ways and evaporating in midair
a Sirens voice couldnt have been more appealing or seductive
he wanted to see from where the light came

                                                                          and there was no one  or anything to stop him

he no sooner began down the stairs  still unable to see under the overhang  the treads and risers transfigured and meld into a narrowing wild animal or goat trail  the sheer plates turned into slicks of stone abrupt crags outshoots and crumbling slag  the garden beds overflowed like trembling lava  their loam washing over the now-negligible paths  the few saplings fecundate and sprawling at their pleasure  their roots worming the earth  surfacing  gulping moist perfumed air and diving again

making the paths bottom  the miasma of primitive air and heavy leafed canopy above  shrouded what had been 

                         the black dagger shaken free of hands that held it in place

and from where the lights emanated stood a band shell  its arches reticulating back and down  footlights afore 

the earth trembled  unsure of itself  embarrassed by his eye
there was a red hiss
and the footlights erupted brilliantly  a divine white  and in the moment before the shock and brilliance invaded his eyes and head he saw a womans figure behind them  at the shells center  her shadow etched jet black at the convex ceiling and back wall of the shell

his vision and senses recoiled  then adamantly sprung back  the eruption left fireflies and particles in the air  then despite the corporeal darkness  her shadow shone blacker where it had been etched  and remained
 

an array of globes  flickering minor suns  burst into being behind where the woman was 
they were immediately swarmed by Deathshead moths and large butterflies
they muted and colourised the light invading the shell with their bodies wings and attitudes

under these lights she became more evident

she was fixed at the stages center  sitting on a ladderback chair
   

it appeared she was bound to the chair by binds he could not see  her naked skin was pulled as if wound by something

the light shuttered

the binds seemed to be pearlescent or translucent serpents  invisible when dark
 

she was blindfolded  her hair was pulled up on top her head and held with pins or woven and twined 
the blindfolds loose ends hung down against her shoulders and back  but only for a moment 
then they unwound themselves and fell away from the back of her head
the blindfold did not fall away  it changed into a black censor bar denying her eyes from being seen 
she craned her head back and the furrows on her torso plumping her breasts between them holding her captive to the chairback lessened and filled out  scarcely rouged
the invisible serpents fell away as the loose ends of the blindfold did

from that freed attitude  from the waist up  she moved her body attractively  like a cloth unfurled in a breeze or a seaweed frond undulating in a bubbling swell

a rough cloak manifested itself across her lap where it seemed she remained tethered fast 
and blindly she grasped it to cover her nakedness  the cloak was torn and the many holes suggested themselves as for her neck and arms  but werent 
yanking it down over her head she sprung her hair free
it tumbled wildly down onto her shoulders 
caught up in the cloaks rents  a peepaboo sort of showing ensued and prevailed as she tried time and time again to hide herself her breasts from view
every effort more titillating than the last

he couldnt look away

he wouldnt look away

all her desperate manoeuvrings failed her shyness  obstructed  obliterated     

                                                                                                                         her manoeuvrings
hapless

manoeuvring 
My Gawd  that was it

he was trying to spin man-over from manoeuvring  manoeuvre! man-over!  not ae for ea or vice versa   oue for a blatant o 

                                            he never said it aloud  she never would have known
she would have been no better off than the woman in the chair

his realisation pithed the dream

the moths and butterflies grew black and collapsed on the arranged orbs 
as the light tilted away she forgot the rude cloth 
whatever held her legs fast relented

she turned in profile  breathless in silhouette 
which he watched and watched and watched until she merged with the darkness
her shadow absorbed 

                                    as she

messengers  dreams     messengers all

Thursday afternoon/evening,  26  2. 15 
1842,  Wednesday  the day-between-two-Ts,  4  3. 15