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.
