i dream

no compass, no guiding star, no
host, no haunt or guardian,
no father, no,
no whispered
instruction …
only my newly severed thoughts …

a guilt I can't phrase or source;
I am not a blank slate -
men have never tended towards
generating objects or patterns
of much value for my life.

dream #1

I dream an old, red velvet
theatre -
huge felines bound off the screen.
I run sickly slow -
my legs in amnesia
just shy of paralysis.

a pion (panther-lion) overtakes me - '
I fall
over and over,
landing always jaw first.
the impact,
a glass needle shower …

I cannot use my broken mouth.

I cannot ask
for help.

dream #2

a pillar, an
edifice, something very simple
with human vanity or remorse at its
underpinning - fairly well out of sight
but if you can feel, you can feel
it there with room to grow with
room to spare adjoining rooms in memory -
what trembling, toothy lock across
two places in time might be wiggled
just so, to gain access to old
dreams?

?

why do we remember
when we remember
what we remember

it's not up to us
is it -

I dream
a sparse structure
with no share of glamour for its
low buildings.

the morning I visit, its grounds
are quiet - a man in calm
work sweeping - a feckless older woman at a front desk
grudgingly tells me the price
of admittance - I don't recall
what it was, only that I feared it was not
worth it -
even as I paid.


I am the only guest.
my footsteps make no noise, though
I feel they should
and wish they did.

silence knocking against
silence

then the chatter
of 2 staff members
echo from … somewhere

and
one voice
singing ...

moving closer

I find her,
she sits in a corner with a hymnal,
ignoring me until I take out a camera
to capture the image of some object
which struck me as important,
trapped in dust just beneath
a plastic screen.

"is not allowed."

"i'm sorry?"

"you cannot snapshot. it is forbidden
what is for memory must be from
memory - no interference - the circle
does not include
you, and you cannot find your way free
from it."

she points, flaps her hand, whole and open
and erasing - fixes me with a stare.

I don't understand but of course,
understand - her tone colorless
acid, reductive - immediately changing back,
she picks up the verse left off.

sweet resumption - her disconnect is absolute from the
cramped room,
spatially unlike anything inside me.

I turn my back and
then back again to ask more from the singer,
but of course
she is gone
and so too
my camera.