dream (in toto)

there                                                                   there was something

 some thing                                                                                      

                    that piqued his attention  a play on words  a word  what was it

what was it?     

                                                                                               this was going to drive him nuts

it happened during their walk into town to pay a bill

then over to the grocery store for vegetables for dinner
  

a stretch of the legs  a cool-down she accurately called it  after an hours exercise at the gym

sounds entitled  which he would assure was not but rather  explicitly  for her Health

it had her on the ropes for a few years  

                                                               but she covered up kept her head between her gloves elbows in tight protecting her belly  absorbing its significant blows

                                                                                                                       the Bell rang

and with the Round over she retreated to recover in her corner

 

it hadnt the stuff to put her away

when you try to convince people youre trying to keep your health in this very unhealthy world

in this world where you might hope to think you have our neighbors back and they yours

but all anyone shares  --  stoked by Fear  --  is in a mutually assured destruction

a brazenly polarized Cuntry 

                                                 where an ex-mayor who has thoroughly discredited himself
can address a filled room and dare challenge the Presidents love-of-country  and no one
in that room dares challenge him  no one wants to risk being ostracized

but rather stands up  quite readily  and applauds his mealy mouth 

he understood red meat  as political pundits called it

                                                                                       but since when has asshole become

red meat?

maybe theres nothing worth trying to convince anyone of

 

hed ask her if she remembered 

                                                   though he couldnt remember if he said anything to her out loud
when it flashed across the Jumbotron he toted about inside his skull  flashing and screaming
and pushing everything else in his consciousness out in front of traffic  and not feeling bad 
feeling the slightest twinge of regret or guilt or what other words people might use

to describe his apparent callousness

evidently he lacked compunction 

                                                     or at least when he was informed or compelled by his Jumbotron

what the hell was it he was thinking of     the Word   

                                                                                   its Mutation

he mentioned it to her   thinking the word bore a vowel set of ae or ea   or at least he believed they were part of the word and mutation   hoping to jog her memory

not that shed have a memory of it if he didnt tell her

--   You know how I like to play

like past pieces

                          you recall  disease   dissease

like that

As we walked up on the demolition of the old Junior High Administration building

along the road  West Mall  past the stumps of the felled trees  

                                                                                                   the one hundred year old trees

I think during our conversation of Harry Crews  the time between me telling you of his polio and him falling into the boiling cauldron prepared for a slaughtered hog

Any bells  Whistles

Anything

she usually knew what he was thinking

I knew youd know  hed told her more often than not

she was uncanny

witches usually are

she threw a mean tarot 

he was sure if they gutted something she could divine from its entrails

(but that he kept to himself)

he was pretty sure the word and its mutant wouldnt be found in his guts

  

it wasnt THAT important

it wasnt worth chomping a cyanide pill between his teeth so it couldnt be tortured out of him

but then 

               he supposed a lot of torture happened for no answers at all

tortured  to satisfy the torturer

he knew kids like that  they loved to torment

he steered clear of their kind

they grew up

he remembered seeing them at a distance  their frosty visages in junior high and high school

loners

 

loners recognized other loners

they took comfort in being by themselves

sought out their own company

it was very likely that that drew him and her together  they were so surprised they could tolerate each other  and didnt seek to excuse themselves from their company

Still  with everything they had going for them    

                                                                          no word  no mutant

Better sleep on it

Really  Better sleep on it

the last time he went to sleep on anything lead him into a dream of a cheap arcade  boardwalk

off a yellow beach on a brilliant blue sea

he could taste the salt in the air 

 

he was with his kid brother  not a year between them

 

they sought . . . rather his brother sought  he was along for the ride  typically he was along for the ride when it came to his wanderlust brother . . . the entrance to a huge garish auditorium

his brother was excited  he said it contained an unbelievable stage and the stage was above an orchestra pit  footlights separating the two                                                                                                                         

entering it 

                  it was as his brother said

though pitifully worn  tawdry

had the spiderwebs been cleared away  and they like tendons  the place would have fallen down around their heads

the people inside were dressed in costumes  or seemed to be

their hair faces and hands were made up

a sickly sweet smell emanated off them 

                                                                 as if to disguise something rotting beneath
 

enormous women sat in seats too small for them  their large legs filled the aisles between the rows of fixed seats

you probably couldnt clear them with a running start

and turned away  you hoped to find another row   hopefully uninhabited 

                                                                                                          they werent

they had to take a seat beside a huge man and woman who were clutching each other

try as he may he couldnt fit his hand between her thighs

and it wasnt for lack of trying

in frustration he had yanked her blouse open exposing an enormous tit and suckled it

suckled an aureole that peeked above his greasy moustache and under his slobbered chin

his other hand  small in comparison  kneaded and pinched her other tit

--   Something huh  his brother said in a hoarse exhale

I cant wait

he thought  He cant wait for what  and wondered if he wanted in on the fat moaning woman beside him
because with a glare he made his brother understand goddamn well he wasnt going to be sitting beside the amorous pigs

 

music started  rose from the empty orchestra pit

the heavy dusty curtain on stage split and labored open

                                                                                           and at stage left center stage stage right  under overhead spots  lazy bluelighted spots  women in gaudy or strict outfits began to strip                                                                                   

 --   Thats what Im talking about Now thats what Im talking about  his brother remarked throwing quick sharp elbows at his shoulder and chest 
 

the fat man on the other side of the woman beside his brother stood up in the pale light and tried thrusting his erect cock into her smeared red lipsticked mouth   he struggled

not that she wasnt for it  but his thighs were too big

she rooted between them like a hog at the trough to have its morsel

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
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 out loud  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