he wondered what kind of things woke
people in the middle of the night from their sleep
he was careful to say sleep
because hed been told more often than he would have imaginedan he had a copious
imagination that they didnt dream
didnt
dream disconcerted him his sleep rarely wasnt
roiled by dreams he rarely slept black senseless
nights
last night he dreamed the
word accumulated
it
formed over the profile of the first car he ever owned cost him sevenhunred dollars his dad cosigned a loan for him he didnt hang his dad out to dry like a
couple of his siblings did
he was livid his father said Well,
son, you don’t loan money if you can’t afford to lose it.
terrible to have thieves as siblings
the stationwagons profile was obscured
an began to fade as ACCUMULATED capitalised itself and grew larger an largerbecame so prominent that while
he slept he began playing with its letters dislocated it mule ACCUMULEATED
acumen ACUMENLATED delineated ACCUMULDELINEATED
the game playing provoked him to splash the walls of his skull with the
words like graffiti so when he woke he wouldnt forget them
Lo an Behold
what did wake him from this dream he was running for state office as
some cat named Ogilvie his face was plastered
on blackanwhite posters however when he was
approached by people he denied he was Ogilvie but still defended and informed
his plank lotsa blue collar workers
rallied for him he woke from that
particular skit before the election results were in
what woke him was his backhe was a backsleeper Off of me bum so he moved to either his right or left shoulder knowing full well that
his return to the grace of sleep an dreams would be shortlived he had surgeries on both so he snatched maybe
halfhourforty minutes he didnt knowhe didnt keep a clock
in his bedroom anwaking he bypassed his back to the other shoulder anwhen it took what it could hed wake and
return to his back usually for the rest of the night anif not back to his shoulders to
shoulder the load
other skits interspersed the ACCUMULATED dislocations mule a creature needed to haul things he accumulated
a fit young woman walked a dog
over a highway bridge towards him where he stood on a grassy parkway beside a freshly
dismembered dinosaur haunch a
raptor clawed foot if he had to guess itd be a tyrannosaur as she stood with him admiring the yetbleeding
haunch the small dog was inquisitive she
kept it at a distance as it strained in its harness overheating she asked him to please take the
leash for a moment he did she stripped out of her zippered sweatshirt to
her sports bra tied it around her hips then took the dog back a white Sealy mattress semi passed them he remarked with a laugh that likely hed be
offloading it later that morning
acumen if ones fortunatehe was he ACUMENLATED developed the ability to make good judgments quick
decisions based on facts
walking through the same crowded
mall where he would later say after switching shoulders he wasnt Ogilvie he
entered a Mens shop to return a shirt his daughter bought him longsleeved wrong sleevelength he had the
receipt he wanted the same shirt a clerk informed him they didnt have that
shirt in stock and that he also checked with their other stores within the vicinity
which proved fruitless he asked for his
daughters cash back anif the young man wasnt authorised hed speak with the
manager
eventually the manager broke corporate rules and reimbursed his
daughters money
delineate he was particular to
describe or portray (something) precisely or to the best of his abilityhe didnt
do things halfass he ACCUMULDELINEATED patiently
one can near precision hone if they are patient
his accumulated patience didnt come
cheap surgeries recoveries rehabilitations being a patient
he was in a strange neighbourhood there were parkways which reminded him of the memory dreams become memories
of the attractive young woman her dog the dinosaur leg they ticked through his sleeping mind as he
stopped at a Sinclair ofcourse
he would to ask for directions when he thought
he was near the address the attendant
set him straight inside ten minutes he knocked
at the door
Dad, what are
you doing here?
he couldnt ply her with I was in
the neighbourhood she had dieddidnt have a neighbourhood he didnt know where he waswhere she was
except she stood in the doorway of a house that suited herthat if he had
a selection of a dozen homes it was the house she would have chosen not him
I miss you I wanted to see
you
she threw her arms around him
he wrapped her in his they both began to weep
they squeezed each other tight NO
Please NO NOnot yet
he
wokeshoulder achinghearing himself say I
love you
he wondered what kind of things woke
people from their sleep
after 0600, Twosday,
14 12. 21
1149, Twosday,
14 12. 21
