Poem-A-Day #241 : Everywhere / The Dream

Everywhere / The Dream

It's hard not to see apocalypse everywhere

The dream of drowning again - the one with the boat
and the attempt at fleeing - the one where your arms just
give out and your lungs are only shrubs not trees

The one with the darkness of water - the tingling
necessity of cold - spikes of jellyfish tentacles
never teeth not sharks this isn't that kind of thing - it
is a gentle death - so fucking quiet

Remember when you dreamt of bees all the time

They would land on your cans of soda - somehow find
the hole in your jeans and sit on your flesh - tongue
the salts there like miners looking for veins

Those were good times - less cold - often so full of sun
that you would wake up needing aloe on everything
feeling itched like poison oak - you drew oak leaf
patterns across every page of every book you read

At 7 AM the phone alerts you that a child has been taken

It is the sound of alarm - a sort of bleating in the darkness
that also resembles the klaxon of air raids - a unexploded
bomb in a churchyard - the mine your foot just ticked

The child is traveling in a beige car - are there
still beige things in the universe that do not travel - that
do not move constantly towards being less beige
do they all have children in them

Then at 9 the notice of a bomb downtown - a robot
lobster clawing at it - digging in a trash can or a strange
backpacks large pockets - there is a question in the sound
of alarm and that question is not why

In the dream of drowning there is a moment where you want ice cream

And that is natural - you probably want to go back
towards the kitchen - the boat sinking breaking falling apart
about you - you want those churned salt-licked milk crystals

There isn't anything clear in all this is dark - it is night
will continue to be so - the bomb will not be found - will not go off
the boat will sink and sink and sink because it is an unreal
a fractal inside your brain of what a drowning looks like

Marinate

For many years I had a reoccurring dream where the room I was sitting in would begin to fill with water.

Every window and door would suddenly be fake. Painted on. As the water rose, I would take refuge on a floating couch. The room would suddenly be very tall and circular shaped.

After a very long time of worrying about falling in (I don't know how to swim) I would reach the ceiling. I would suddenly be pushed into the water. The couch still beneath me, holding me up enough to touch the roof. The water rising. My eyes the only thing above the surface.

Then I'd wake up.

Many years later I had the dream for what turned out to be the last time. Instead of apparently drowning, the roof suddenly flew off right as I was about to go under and a man with wings saved me.

I like to think it was Birdman.


Marinate 5/26

Do you have years - ?

Raise arms up like a bear and spin
slowly - this keeps the past at bay - sit
down sob until someone (mother) takes you home

Mirrors reflect - they bundle the twig
faces we make - hold them behind silvered surface
until we least expect - releasing self-ghosts as if
fire onto bathrooms - bedrooms - countless rooms

Do you have years - ?

That memory of drowning
where all is chlorine blue - sulfur smell
in your lungs - kicking disembodies legs floating -

A cylinder room with a cap top that flies off
and fish that slowly - there may be a shark - somewhere
a fan blade set to slice 'n dice
like a movie - some (derivative) nightmare - !

Do you have years - ?

Then you get to relive this each time you look
puffy-eyed - twinkle less - you
standing in a toilette in your own water staring

In your eyes - you can see this now - sudden
rolling credits - a trampoline of guest stars
pasts are bouncing around in your eyes -
you can name them - your mouth could begin to move -

Do you have years - ?