A handsome man with a brown/black-haired child-- freckled, long eyelashes-- climbs the stairs to the upper level of the train. The child has a long curve of a scar running from just above and to the left of the whorl of his cowlick, and down to his left ear. The child speaks slowly, a little dumbly, asking "what's yesterdaaaaay, what's yesterdaaaaay," and exclaiming as we pass junkyards, "another train." The man is responding patiently, but I have to wonder what sadness or resignation this man might have in his life-- perhaps his son's personality was stolen from him, either in some accident or defect, requiring his head to be opened, the electric-gelled-fat pieces within rearranged, reordered, removed...
More than once, he has asked his father, "where are we going?" And his father usually answers, but sometimes the child has to ask twice, before the father deigns to respond to the question he has answered more times than I think anyone would ever care to count. Again: "what's yesterdaaay." The question is ignored. The father wants to move on, but his son is stuck in a loop where he cannot make memories, he doesn't remember that they're going three more stops, two, one to Downer's Grove to get french fries.
They disembark. One last time: "where are we going?" And they walk away from the train-- the man holding, gently, patiently, his son's hand in his right, and a sweat-out Starbucks cup filled with warm remnants of some tea mixture in his left. On his fourth finger there is the silver sheen of a ring.
The son stares blankly at his father's under armour-clad torso-- eye level-- and worries his lip, biting it, with his teeth and forefinger. Nervous habit. Dad is on his phone, sending a quick text to their rendezvous, or perhaps checking apps to find a place with french fries. The train pulls away.
Saturday, July 30, 2016
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Dreamsequence 03.09.009: Someone else penned these memoirs
I dreamt about you last night. Again (as it was in the past), like a specter, your composite particles assimilated, colluded, detoxified out of atmosphere and ether: to haunt me. And how I’ve missed these ghostly encounters—I really have.
We spoke no words.
We spoke color, line, shape, form.
We enveloped one another in passions unalike to any encounter we'd held in the past.
It was as if we were deaf; we touched, our breath was hot, our motions guided by some force or will of the upper realms. We communicated as if by telepathy, through the dilation and contraction of our pupils. We mashed our skulls together, irises like the lenses of kaleidoscopes—the great blacknesses inside each of us beckoning our attentions, longing to be beheld. And we were truly kaleidoscopic.
In the dream you were so real. I was so real; realer than I’ve felt in years, Prozac or no—I was real, and I have a non-fear (I say non-fear because fear is a feeling, and I do not have those anymore) that I may never again be as real as I once was. There is no soul inside me anymore. And I can not attribute that to you, nor to anyone else. Not even to myself. It is just simple, like everything else now. It is factual. It is solid and mundane. It is self-assuring.
In my thirty-second windows of hysteria, mania, breakdown—I feel a tinge of my former self. Yes, I say—this is how it’s meant to feel. But like a lucid dream, in which one’s recognition of said will invariably jinx the entire affair and return the dreamer to ignorance—of the blissful and unconscious variety or of the flat, conscious waking one—I can taste my own folly. I know this is not real; I know this is not as it once was, for that was Then, and this is all too Now.
None of what comes out of me feels like Me anymore. It’s all someone else’s doing. Someone else penned these memoirs.
We spoke no words.
We spoke color, line, shape, form.
We enveloped one another in passions unalike to any encounter we'd held in the past.
It was as if we were deaf; we touched, our breath was hot, our motions guided by some force or will of the upper realms. We communicated as if by telepathy, through the dilation and contraction of our pupils. We mashed our skulls together, irises like the lenses of kaleidoscopes—the great blacknesses inside each of us beckoning our attentions, longing to be beheld. And we were truly kaleidoscopic.
In the dream you were so real. I was so real; realer than I’ve felt in years, Prozac or no—I was real, and I have a non-fear (I say non-fear because fear is a feeling, and I do not have those anymore) that I may never again be as real as I once was. There is no soul inside me anymore. And I can not attribute that to you, nor to anyone else. Not even to myself. It is just simple, like everything else now. It is factual. It is solid and mundane. It is self-assuring.
In my thirty-second windows of hysteria, mania, breakdown—I feel a tinge of my former self. Yes, I say—this is how it’s meant to feel. But like a lucid dream, in which one’s recognition of said will invariably jinx the entire affair and return the dreamer to ignorance—of the blissful and unconscious variety or of the flat, conscious waking one—I can taste my own folly. I know this is not real; I know this is not as it once was, for that was Then, and this is all too Now.
None of what comes out of me feels like Me anymore. It’s all someone else’s doing. Someone else penned these memoirs.
Saturday, July 23, 2016
04.03.009 Miss Claire
I take my secrets by night, Miss Claire;
imbibe them when the backs are turned—
and I giggle at their foul play.
The world is asleep to our kind.
These are my secrets, Miss Claire;
two a night, each and every.
What dreams they hold—and what sadness
they bring in sleep, Miss Claire.
They are my secret powers against moonstare.
They are the lies and keys swallowed,
eaten;
they grind their way out of solidity.
They disappear without a trace,
Miss Claire.
They are my babies, my hopes to place.
I elect them individually, and gobble their heads—
so full of tiny, bright-shiny souls—
to fill the holes, the damnéd gaps
of inconsistency; what You, Miss Claire,
leave behind in me.
I spit on your grave, Miss Claire.
Haggard bitch; whore of Unholy Hell:
grace me no more with your vacuous, pressureless gaze.
Leave me, leave me be.
Nature abhors you, Miss Claire.
So do my secrets;
and the bottle is empty.
imbibe them when the backs are turned—
and I giggle at their foul play.
The world is asleep to our kind.
These are my secrets, Miss Claire;
two a night, each and every.
What dreams they hold—and what sadness
they bring in sleep, Miss Claire.
They are my secret powers against moonstare.
They are the lies and keys swallowed,
eaten;
they grind their way out of solidity.
They disappear without a trace,
Miss Claire.
They are my babies, my hopes to place.
I elect them individually, and gobble their heads—
so full of tiny, bright-shiny souls—
to fill the holes, the damnéd gaps
of inconsistency; what You, Miss Claire,
leave behind in me.
I spit on your grave, Miss Claire.
Haggard bitch; whore of Unholy Hell:
grace me no more with your vacuous, pressureless gaze.
Leave me, leave me be.
Nature abhors you, Miss Claire.
So do my secrets;
and the bottle is empty.
Monday, July 11, 2016
Demons 11.06.011
Endangering Old Squalor's home,
I go into the wood alone.
With fear to pierce
my neck, my skull:
blood runs in ribbons from my knees;
into the wood alone I go.
The trees whisper tricks and secrecies
of bugs and humdrum forest-lull.
No human presence along my path;
The mist surrounds me fore, and aft:
preceding dreams and the receding screams
as panic, fleeting, drips trails behind me;
into the night I flee.
I go into the wood alone.
With fear to pierce
my neck, my skull:
blood runs in ribbons from my knees;
into the wood alone I go.
The trees whisper tricks and secrecies
of bugs and humdrum forest-lull.
No human presence along my path;
The mist surrounds me fore, and aft:
preceding dreams and the receding screams
as panic, fleeting, drips trails behind me;
into the night I flee.
Monday, June 6, 2016
Cold Table 02.04.008
a long time ago, before the Room:
when i was a kid,
i'd cry silently to your God--
wet and warm in the shower,
tears hotter than fire
pouring from my eyes,
rivalling the flow of our crusted water spigot.
and throat tightens up, the sobs
convulse their way out--
from the gut and vibrating through bone,
piercing through heart;
strangling vocal cords and rotting teeth
til the spiral-dizzies--
popping and erupting in vibrant colors
against the dark spaces inside my head--
would eat out the backs of my eyes.
and legs go rubber-akimbo,
diaphragm tears through air like
rabid wolves through the sickest and weakest of the pack.
i'd heard stories of your God and his naughty children;
i'd heard how they broke their promise
and thus unleashed every plague,
every evil, every broken family
and starving child
upon the virgin world.
i asked your God that if He
so desired--
and if he promised to keep his word--
i would take into me all the bad of the world.
and if he let every evil die
as i lay passing on my own deathbed--
i told Him that i would commit;
that no matter my pleas and woes and sufferings,
i would continue to let him empty into me
every sin and bit of sadness that haunted the race of man.
thrice did i call to him, and thrice was i so resigned.
thrice did i collapse upon my bed of compressed fiberglass;
and thrice did i rise anew.
Mom and Dad never once knew
of the promises I'd made.
nor does the doctor, nor the pharmacist;
nor warden, gatekeeper, cell-mate.
i keep hearing of this man named Jesus.
and i can't bring myself to believe that such a man ever existed--
'cause i believe in your God, for He is mine now too,
and i know that He would never lie to me;
i know that He, above all men,
will keep His word.
and this Jesus fella, well,
it seems like he did everything right.
don't it?
so why did your God
let me make the same promise;
to be honest, i am scared.
the fellas here with me,
they say God's a liar;
says i'm the only one who can hear him.
and sometimes, as i stare into the Light--
as the straps tighten,
bite into my wrists--
as the needle plunges home,
petrol jelly on my temples
foam-rubber between clenched teeth
spittle flying from Mouth
and onto Cold Table--
sometimes, Familiar Voice
whispers into my ear.
he tells me that they are right.
when i was a kid,
i'd cry silently to your God--
wet and warm in the shower,
tears hotter than fire
pouring from my eyes,
rivalling the flow of our crusted water spigot.
and throat tightens up, the sobs
convulse their way out--
from the gut and vibrating through bone,
piercing through heart;
strangling vocal cords and rotting teeth
til the spiral-dizzies--
popping and erupting in vibrant colors
against the dark spaces inside my head--
would eat out the backs of my eyes.
and legs go rubber-akimbo,
diaphragm tears through air like
rabid wolves through the sickest and weakest of the pack.
i'd heard stories of your God and his naughty children;
i'd heard how they broke their promise
and thus unleashed every plague,
every evil, every broken family
and starving child
upon the virgin world.
i asked your God that if He
so desired--
and if he promised to keep his word--
i would take into me all the bad of the world.
and if he let every evil die
as i lay passing on my own deathbed--
i told Him that i would commit;
that no matter my pleas and woes and sufferings,
i would continue to let him empty into me
every sin and bit of sadness that haunted the race of man.
thrice did i call to him, and thrice was i so resigned.
thrice did i collapse upon my bed of compressed fiberglass;
and thrice did i rise anew.
Mom and Dad never once knew
of the promises I'd made.
nor does the doctor, nor the pharmacist;
nor warden, gatekeeper, cell-mate.
i keep hearing of this man named Jesus.
and i can't bring myself to believe that such a man ever existed--
'cause i believe in your God, for He is mine now too,
and i know that He would never lie to me;
i know that He, above all men,
will keep His word.
and this Jesus fella, well,
it seems like he did everything right.
don't it?
so why did your God
let me make the same promise;
to be honest, i am scared.
the fellas here with me,
they say God's a liar;
says i'm the only one who can hear him.
and sometimes, as i stare into the Light--
as the straps tighten,
bite into my wrists--
as the needle plunges home,
petrol jelly on my temples
foam-rubber between clenched teeth
spittle flying from Mouth
and onto Cold Table--
sometimes, Familiar Voice
whispers into my ear.
he tells me that they are right.
Saturday, May 28, 2016
Dreamsequence/Time Loop 20.05.016
In the dream, I see a man get slaughtered-- perhaps he did it to himself-- in the back of an open semi-truck trailer. He is handsome, clean-cut, wearing a suit. He presses a button on his keychain fob, and is immediately eviscerated. Blood (cherry-red, too bright) is everywhere, splattered and seeping. People are running and screaming. It must have been a sort of detonation device that did it, though his body stays largely intact.
Flash forward: I am returning to a nighttime beach, just following my completion of a round of police questioning. I pass my car-- a hatchback-- in the small parking lot bordering the beach, and tread out onto the sand, barefoot. My shoes are held in my left hand, pointer- and middle-fingers inserted into their interiors, holding them by the heels. They are black dress shoes: polished leather, rounded toes. I had also been wearing a suit, but my white button-down is now untucked, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened. Hair blowing in the warm nighttime sea-breeze.
I have come here for my wife, who has been waiting for me. She, like my car, is a dark, blurred figure in the blue-green-black of the night, but I can just make out her form, sundress billowing in that same nighttime breeze, striding towards me in the wet sand.
As we near each other-- I, just barely on the edge of the beach-- the form changes. She is now a small, black-and-brown applehead chihuahua swimming in the surf, riding the swells-- which are now a yard or so from my feet. To my left, there is a drop-off, like the edge of an infinity pool. The dog avoids this drop, though I encourage it to keep swimming, keep playing in the water. The dog (my dog-- we have come here for a nighttime romp) swims towards me, shooting several apprehensive glances to its right as it swims around to the left of me. I glance to my immediate left and see a water snake, striped white and black, all six or seven feet of it lazily stretched between a jagged grey rock protruding from the water and a gnarled piece of driftwood.
Flash forward: I am returning to a nighttime beach, just following my completion of a round of police questioning. I pass my car-- a hatchback-- in the small parking lot bordering the beach, and tread out onto the sand, barefoot. My shoes are held in my left hand, pointer- and middle-fingers inserted into their interiors, holding them by the heels. They are black dress shoes: polished leather, rounded toes. I had also been wearing a suit, but my white button-down is now untucked, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened. Hair blowing in the warm nighttime sea-breeze.
I have come here for my wife, who has been waiting for me. She, like my car, is a dark, blurred figure in the blue-green-black of the night, but I can just make out her form, sundress billowing in that same nighttime breeze, striding towards me in the wet sand.
As we near each other-- I, just barely on the edge of the beach-- the form changes. She is now a small, black-and-brown applehead chihuahua swimming in the surf, riding the swells-- which are now a yard or so from my feet. To my left, there is a drop-off, like the edge of an infinity pool. The dog avoids this drop, though I encourage it to keep swimming, keep playing in the water. The dog (my dog-- we have come here for a nighttime romp) swims towards me, shooting several apprehensive glances to its right as it swims around to the left of me. I glance to my immediate left and see a water snake, striped white and black, all six or seven feet of it lazily stretched between a jagged grey rock protruding from the water and a gnarled piece of driftwood.
As the serpent slides fully into the water, I corral my dog and take a step back-- and it is now daytime, mid-morning, and the serpent fades away. There are many people and many dogs, and I am in an alcove of sorts, with an archway of rock. I am still submerged, shin-deep, in the blue-green water, and I see a Yorkie-Maltese mix swim up onto a submerged shelf not more than a few yards from me.
I am with my brother, and I recognize this dog to be Fig-- Marnie's companion and familiar. My brother realizes this too, but it's unclear to me now whether this is because I exclaimed these things aloud (rather than merely thinking them), or because he has osmotically absorbed so much information through my lasting infatuation with Marnie. In this dream, however, we are all friends, familiars, acquaintances.
I blink and my orientation changes again. Marnie and her boyfriend (tan, scruffy, muscled but lanky; buzz cut, facial hair only on his chin) are in front of us, and she's smiling, and the familiar, overwhelming feeling of déjà vu hits me.
I am with my brother, and I recognize this dog to be Fig-- Marnie's companion and familiar. My brother realizes this too, but it's unclear to me now whether this is because I exclaimed these things aloud (rather than merely thinking them), or because he has osmotically absorbed so much information through my lasting infatuation with Marnie. In this dream, however, we are all friends, familiars, acquaintances.
I blink and my orientation changes again. Marnie and her boyfriend (tan, scruffy, muscled but lanky; buzz cut, facial hair only on his chin) are in front of us, and she's smiling, and the familiar, overwhelming feeling of déjà vu hits me.
We're all conversing, happy to have so fortuitously met one another here, happy to see the dogs playing and enjoying themselves.
Weed is brought up in the course of the conversation, and my brother offers some, and he and the boyfriend chat unintelligibly as Marnie produces from her beach bag what looks like an etched, silver cigarette case, though narrower. It has arabesque floral designs of recessed, oxidized silver. She opens it and hands it to me-- all words muted to my ears, as my heart throbs with some knowledge of having beat this way before, every singular moment a reiteration, every tick having already been ticked both behind and in front of me, infinitely-- and I see inside that it's a makeup case, hinged, with a rectangular mirror covering the entirety of the inside of the hinged top (I am reminded now, as I write this-- and with some portent-- of Lirael's Dark Mirror).
There are three or four cells of makeup cakes-- eyeshadow, blush; aubergine, peach, burgundy-- on the far right of the inner compartment, with a singular, large open cell in the center and left, comprising the rest of the lower half of the case. I am reminded of an artist's palette; this would be the space used for blending shades. There is a residue here, and I touch it: grainy, dusty, with tiny orange filaments-- and as I realize that this is where Marnie keeps her weed, my brother's hand reaches over from the left on my vision's edge (his nails painted a bluish, pearlescent silver, some raggedy bracelet tied around his wrist), and places there a single joint, fat in the middle.
Marnie is looking at me, smiling with her eyes, mouth shut, a slight smile. Clearly, we are all going to get stoned on the beach and have a good time. As I close the makeup/weed case, I notice another compartment on the top. The lid of this compartment is either clear plastic, or else it is partially pierced out so that the contents are visible. The beveled edge of the compartment-- which hinges as well-- does not meet with the rest of the case, but instead leaves a small gap. The join (or lack thereof) makes me think of a slit in a vent for a forced-air house heating system.
The compartment is filled completely with bitten-off nubs of eraser heads from the ends of pencils. This is bizarre to me, and is of some importance-- not just to me, but to her boyfriend too, who asks her what they're for, and why she won't tell him. This is clearly a conversation they've had before, outside of this time loop, and as Marnie grins through her silence, refusing to give in to his begging, she and the boyfriend-- still pleading-- make their departure, Marnie coyly waving goodbye to me and my brother.
I feel paralyzed, because I know that I am supposed to warn her, warn her about something, and the time loop is closing, and I know that this is one of the last few times she was happy, and I am stuck, rooted to this one spot and to my dumbfounded silence as the loop and the dream both fade from me.
Perhaps I am to warn her that her boyfriend is going to kill himself-- but I'm losing the moment of clarity, I'm losing my clarity, the moment is gone, and I am left on the beach, my unseen brother now gone too, and all I can do is talk to an old, sage Black woman: a beachgoer, shaded by the stone arch, and yet still sitting beneath a beach umbrella she'd stuck in the sand.
As the dream disintegrates and I rise to wakefulness, the woman tries to tell me that I am powerless to save her, that perhaps I just need to enjoy myself, here on this beach. Our conversation fades, and is largely unremembered.
Thursday, May 26, 2016
26.05.016 IML: “I Leave Today”
A year ago was the last time I attempted reaching out. Since then, I have only had the occasional, potent dream.
You are here somewhere, amidst the throng of worshipers, followers, others who have had success inside the pyramid. I have just discovered my own walls closing in again; the inexorable quietude sinking into my skin, the assuredness that time will pass on unto the immemorial, with solitude presiding over the full arc of time.
There are others like you, others who have been absolved, dissolved into the din of silence, leaving me with a salt on my skin, twining smells of graphite and cumin, a prickling of the nose and eyes.
Somewhere-- very near, yet very far-- you all pass on; a fear grows from the silence, unmitigated and perhaps aggravated, by the endless, clamoring noise of the squalor that is a life, being. I have traveled distances, yet have realized no displacement. There is a zero point in between every hot breath, whether it fall on a lover's neck, encountering the pulse of a stranger-- though human, and grimy like the rest, rimed in sweat-- or into an endless space: receivers and transmitters of consciousness its anchor point.
You are here somewhere, amidst the throng of worshipers, followers, others who have had success inside the pyramid. I have just discovered my own walls closing in again; the inexorable quietude sinking into my skin, the assuredness that time will pass on unto the immemorial, with solitude presiding over the full arc of time.
There are others like you, others who have been absolved, dissolved into the din of silence, leaving me with a salt on my skin, twining smells of graphite and cumin, a prickling of the nose and eyes.
Somewhere-- very near, yet very far-- you all pass on; a fear grows from the silence, unmitigated and perhaps aggravated, by the endless, clamoring noise of the squalor that is a life, being. I have traveled distances, yet have realized no displacement. There is a zero point in between every hot breath, whether it fall on a lover's neck, encountering the pulse of a stranger-- though human, and grimy like the rest, rimed in sweat-- or into an endless space: receivers and transmitters of consciousness its anchor point.
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