I had a dream last night that I was in a car with Larry Eigner and Allen Ginsberg. Larry was driving. We drove over wooden slats in a muddy field and got stuck. Larry was extremely upset that he ruined Allen’s car. Allen didn’t care. And then Gregory Corso appeared and suddenly we were standing in a wooded area beside a rotting graveyard. The moon was so large it consumed half the sky, and it was light orange. An eerie orange. I fumbled with my phone to take a picture of it, and then I woke up.

Weird dream department: last night I dreamed I died and was promptly pressed into service in a kind of poet's community, everybody showing up from Bob Creeley to Charles Olson ("Big Charlie" he was called), Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan & many more. It turned out to be in a kind of bar where everyone was expecting to sing beer songs (Trinklied, the German tinkled in my ears) with unabashed & perpetual gusto. Everyone seemed to be wearing bearskin body-suits.

I dreamed me. In the dream I was who I am at the age I am searching for something I did not know what until I found myself as an infant with a white blanket drawn up to my shoulders, lying on my back, arms in the air wiggling my fingers at myself as I bent over myself, and we touched our finger tips, and I felt a peaceful joy.

This morning I had a dream that seems to recur every few years, wherein I find that Frank didn't really die. This time he had moved to San Francisco. I was in the hospital or something and found him on facebook. I contacted him and told him I really needed him to come home. Then he was here. Very happy to see him, gave him a big hug. He looked twenty years older but well, and just like Frank. I felt very sad that he had missed the entire upbringing of our son, and I knew he was going to go back to San Francisco, to a life he had built without us.

I dreamed there was an Eileen Myles coloring book.

I dreamt the world was ending and everyone was frantically looking for safety while I ran from office to office at Naropa to get signatures on paperwork.

In a morning / before-waking dream, I was on stage at a small theater venue, like an art-house movie theater, a full house for a poetry slam.  I was to read from my collection “Bad Poetry For James Franco”, and was giving my spiel / intro…that the writing of these poems kept me from punching James Franco in the throat for his seeming overall mission to make the world safe for the straight white male by inserting himself into so many marginalized roles [such as, photographically replicating Cindy Sherman in her iconic feminist body of work “Untitled Film Stills 1977 - 80”, mimicking her poses, clothing and locations though not shaving his own iconic facial hair — and providing bad and patronizing poetry to accompany her own photos); by playing two known homosexual poets on film, Ginsberg and Hart Crane; playing a wigga gangster with gold front and cornrows in Harmony Korine’s “Springbreakers”; pretty much lifting Kenneth Anger’s whole film “Fireworks”, in which a young man sexually fantasizes about being beaten up by a group of more macho boys; and his selfies project, and his own panned poetry…why would he do all this?  What compelled him to make the world safe for the SWM?…etc…THEN he stands up from the seated crowd and says to me, walking towards me in the aisle, “c’mon, I’m right here…punch me” and I explain that oh, I don’t need to now as through this poetry project I worked it out…and he is still walking, this time onto the stage with me, “come on, punch me I’m Right Here.”  And I explain more that in writing about him, in his voice, I sort of got him, all his need to get 7 MFAs and read poetry for MoMA…that it’s a thing to do, because he can, it’s a new thing, a way to expand because he can, and I get it and I don’t need to punch him anymore.  And he says “oh..”. And his shoulders relax.  And he says “well now that I’m up here, I realize you don’t have anyone to sign for the crowd during your reading.  I know ASL, American Sign Language, and would be happy to sign for you.”  So I said sure, great, have at!  Thanks!  And he stood on the edge of the stage and signed with his hands as I read from my book.  Then I woke up.

I dreamed I was visiting with Trevor Moffat, the lead guitarist of my first teenage rock band. I had agreed to plastic surgery in which we would switch appearances entirely: faces, hair, etc. I was very sad about it, but sure I must have agreed for some good reason which I couldn’t remember. At different points in the dream, I also told various people I met that Trevor and I had exchanged names. People still seemed to recognize me.

Early in the dream, I got out of Trevor’s car at his modernist house and went to a Soviet pub. The place was full of brutish workers. I left my seat to ask the indifferent server for some French fries, and when I got back, a guy was sitting in my chair and had drank all my beer. I sat next to him, refusing to be intimidated. His friend, a guy across the table started talking to me. They were German. He was talking about people in northern British Columbia, mostly holed up little cabins, and I mentioned that yes, I knew the man he called The Master; I revealed that I knew his name to be Richard Teitelbaum. He corrected my pronunciation, but accepted what I was saying. We discovered we had other people in common. They were a little warmer to me after that.

At a late point in the dream, I forgot a woman’s name who recognized me even with Trevor’s face. I can’t remember if her name was Ruth or if that was the name I incorrectly called her. At her house, I got a look at myself in the mirror and who I actually looked like was Chris Batting (the lead guitarist of my second band). Outside her place, the Fraser River was flooding ominously—almost right up to her door.

I dreamed that the results of the election were in and we were all gathered around in this bombed-out looking place with empty swimming pools and we heard the results and we sat there, stunned, and then broke into hysterical wailing, screaming and tears with relief. Hillary had won.

In a pub with a group of friends. A romantic proximity with Kevin (Thurston). Standing against a wall in the pub, faces close, laughing. Someone reveals they need to blind me--someone other than Kevin, I think. At first the man tries to explain why in the pub. I imagine accessing all my other senses, what it would be like to be blind, the possible claustrophobia or panic. Then there is strangely some appeal. I am not as afraid as you would think. Outside, a van full of women, one of whom is Lisa Gross, a college friend I haven't seen for 30 years. I am obviously preoccupied and am in a hurry to leave. This reoffends the college friend, and she disappears into the pub, as I apologetically look at the remaining group of women. I begin to fly, albeit awkwardly at first, to get away from the man that wishes to blind me. Then I am flying full force, 20 feet above the ground. I stop in front of a building, perhaps where Lee (Gough) lives as I am trying to get to her. He has caught up with me, explains why I must be blinded. It makes sense, and I wake.

last night i dreamed that i gave birth to two babies. one was a regular baby. the other was a kangaroo. i was a bit afraid of the kangaroo so i nailed its front paw to the floor so that it wouldn't hop all over the house. then i decided to tell the father that he was a father of both a baby and a kangaroo somehow, even though we have not seen each other in years. he was surprised and asked me not to tell anyone. he didn't want his current wife who is pregnant to find out that she might give birth to a kangaroo.

late last night near morning, I’m on a boat. tidy, motel-like room. a tuxedo'd, Costanza-ish dude keeps poking his head in to tell me “Trotsky is almost here! Trotsky is almost here!” then, a guy climbs in thru the window, who is Trotsky, tho he looks nothing like Trotsky, and I’m very excited to see him, because we’re old, dear friends. I kiss him on the forehead. he is exhausted and needs to lay down. I say in russian, “dear Lev, it is so good to be here with you again.” he lays down and doesn’t say much.

but wait, I think, it’s 2016. it can’t be Trotsky. so why’d I call him Lev? it’s a pun about art, I decide. “did you like the joke about art?” I ask Trotsky. Trotsky answers, “on a boat, everything one says is a joke about art.” I decide this is true and Trotsky is great
then I realize that it can’t be a pun about art, because calling someone Lev has absolutely no relationship to art. instead I tell him, “I call you Lev because you are our lion!” (this makes more sense because the name Lev, as in Trotsky, Tolstoy, or Schreiber, means “lion.”)
he looks over at me and says, “I am the Other Trotsky.”
then I wake up and see this! I believe this is as poorly as it is possible for the human mouth to produce the sounds of french. I believe Trotsky may have been a wooden figurine who sat too near a xmas tree & was accidentally turned alive by magic.
& most of all, I eagerly anticipate meeting the Other Trotsky, may his Other Revolution come soon.

I dreamed last night that Donald Trump kidnapped me to work for his campaign ("Because you watch a lot of C-Span," he said) and kept trying to win me over with gigantic — I mean, huge — cookies and shots of liquor. I woke up feeling rattled.

Strange dream this morning. In the dream Robin and I were going to visit my dad but when we got there my dad wasn't there and it wasn't his place. The compound was a beehive of activity, lotsa country yeehaws and rednecks wandering around. I asked someone where we were and they named a county that was no where near my dad's house and then informed me that they were all vampires. Robin said she was fascinated by vampires and sat down to have a drink with a couple of them.

Dreamed last night that I met Kanye West at a poetry program, and he fell instantly in love with me. I kept trying to get away, told him I was older than I looked, I wasn't interested, but he would not be dissuaded.

I dreamt that we were driving on a highway in Massachusetts, and there was an accident.  We ended up abandoning our car and somehow commandeering an empty yellow cab, which we drove all the way home, several hours to the south.  Then, we were getting ready to go to my sister-in-law Maude Kent’s in Philadelphia, and realized we couldn’t take the cab.  What were we going to do with it?  I thought of driving the cab to a street I remembered from childhood near the Garden State Parkway in East Orange, N.J., and ditching it, but that could backfire, and we wouldn’t have a car.  I also thought about our abandoned car in Massachusetts and figured no one would trace it to us.  How would I join up with Louisa and the kids in Philadelphia?  Maybe instead of commandeering the cab, we should have stayed with our car and arranged for it to be fixed.  Sure, it would have set us back a few hours, but we wouldn’t have all these problems now.

*

I dreamt that I was walking with a friend on the sidewalk and we passed a driveway, bordered with pillars, that led to a shady estate.  The place was very similar to the corner of Ralston Ave. and Grove Rd. in South Orange, N.J., near my friend Mark Woldin’s childhood house, except there wasn’t a driveway there; the driveway for the old Board of Education building was closer to South Orange Ave.  As we crossed the gravel driveway, I perceived someone in the shade, a man.  He pointed a handgun at me and looked like he was about to fire.  Terrified, I turned and tried to run around the corner.  Two shots rang out.  I felt both hit me, in the right shoulder.  I went down.  I lay flat on my back.  It felt very natural.  I didn’t feel any pain.  My friend ran away around the corner.  I suddenly worried the gunman would walk up and shoot me in the head execution-style.  I thought about trying to get up and run away.  But my body quickly communicated that that was unthinkable.  I had been flattened by the wounds.  I just had to lie there and hope for the best.

*

I dreamt that after a college class broke up, I wandered through underground hallways in a dorm.  I had to go to the bathroom.  I entered the room of a woman student, who said I could use her bathroom.  Sadly, the bathroom door wouldn’t completely close, partly because of a laundry basket. When I came out, her boyfriend was there, sitting on the floor.  He was older than us, with gray hair.  I noticed a leather pouch near him, which I understood contained some marijuana.  There was something sensuous about the pouch.  Was it doe leather?  Suede leather?  There might have been a lighter lying next to it, creating a kind of still life on the bland carpet.  The young woman got up off her bed, stood there for a moment in her bright, flowing clothes, and then headed off to class.  I sat down to get high with the guy.  We talked.  He said his synagogue was half an hour away (from either Harvard or Brown, it wasn’t clear which campus we were on).  Was he from Rhode Island? I asked.  No, he was from “Stafford Fuckwad,” which I instantly understood to be Stafford Springs, Conn., where my father was jailed overnight as a law student in the late 1930s.  I was going to mention that, but I don’t think I did.  He seemed to hear it telepathically.  We talked about how the cops in Connecticut were unbelievably bad.  I said that they should be prosecuted under the RICO statute.  "The whole Justice Department should be considered a Racketeer, Racketeer, Racketeer Influenced Cuh Cuh," I stuttered.  I couldn't get the right phrase out: Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization.

This morning I had a wild, elaborate dream that Bernie Sanders came to Dreamtime Village. I was showing him some of the handmade music instruments we had made years ago and he picked up an electric bass and started playing a really funky slap bass groove. The dream then cuts to me showing him proudly my newly published Samsara Congeries and he immediately finds a typo and then launches into a very studied critique of experimental writing, grinning all the while.

A Stop Along the Milky Way for Some Tiramisu

To follow the path of combusting stars

from sky

to the very world

that receives the starlight

requires a stop along the Milky Way.

I chance this sojourn

not knowing how it will figure

in the overall promise

or composition of the world

replete with errors,

tropes, and falsifications.

During the cold night that has been chosen

for its resplendence,

my words and the combusting stars

wander from their accustomed place.

I taste the sweet lift-me-up

that helps to fashion a fortunate life.

Blessed is that raw slumber

to which a dream is affixed.

Calamity Control

Without great cause

to whimper and whine,

I am content now to daydream,

looking out at the unadorned sky,

re-living how a flowerpot fell

from a brownstone’s windowsill

the moment I passed by

on customary city walk from here to there.

The thud was not as great

as when the plastic bottle of Evian

fell in the same fashion, different day,

just missing me.

So I envisioned country wicker.

Find a porch with some curvature

to receive the sun’s benediction.

Expect that rain

will be the only thing falling —

and the only intrusion,

some handsome deer, nibbling.

My dream: At AWP, I dropped my phone on a flight of marble steps and it shattered. I first thought "Oh, I won't bother to get it fixed." Then I thought: "Wait! It's my brain! I have to get it fixed!"

I dreamt that Sam Truitt and I accompanied my late mother and stepfather to a theatrical event.  We walked up to the marquee in a small town and picked up our tickets.  As we walked away in the afternoon light, cars were pouring into the town, including many limos, with people who wanted to see the show.  It seemed strange that people were arriving so early.  It was slightly dangerous to cross the main street, which made a big turn coming into town.  We went into a supermarket, where Mom and Eli were buying some things.  I told them to get a pack of cigarettes.  When they emptied their bag at the cash register, two packs of cigarettes spilled out.  I hadn’t asked for two packs.  And what brand were they?  After the purchase, we sat at a table going through the purchases.  Mom was holding the theater tickets in one hand while she went through the items, and that created a coordination problem for her.  Eli pressed her to go through the items more quickly.  Mom turned to Eli and said, “I can’t do it so fast,” but what she was really saying was, “Please don’t be hard on me, especially in front of them.”

*

I dreamt that I was giving a poetry reading, going second.  It was in a big room, below street level.  I was trying to decide whether to read the introduction to Fleeting Memories or to Inner Voices Heard Before Sleep.  I made a decision, but then a woman I respected persuaded me not to carry it out.  Meanwhile, there was a delay between the first reader and me.  The MC was addressing a bunch of unnecessary questions from someone.  I looked around the room.  It had thinned considerably in the interim.  Was Clark Coolidge still there?  I wanted him to hear me.  My work buddy Rob Rossi was standing near the MC.  I walked up to him.  He asked how things were going.  I said, “Not great.”  Then I reached out and touched him on the arm and gave him a big smile.  For some reason, I believed touching him on the arm would make me feel better, and it did.  I even noticed a few people coming down the ramp into the room.

*

I dreamt that I was talking to my college roommate Rick Spiers, a longtime follower of the late H.L. “Doc” Humes, who was obsessed with government surveillance in the 1970s.  Then, descending into the subway, I heard my name called over the loudspeaker, which was very disturbing.  I entered a waiting room that in actuality was a surveillance center.  The seats flashed your name on them as you walked past.  They must have electronically picked up information from you as you passed.  There was also a banner over the surveillance center, saying NO PORN, part of a new campaign by Mayor Bloomberg.  I watched people who were inside the glass walls of a big department store.  The people looked so real.  I noticed that many of them, both the stylish and the dowdy, were wearing pale blue shirts and sweaters. I looked from person to person, taking in the colors of their clothes.  It filled me with wonder.  Then, I walked along a path in a large urban park, behind a girl dancer and her boyfriend, both of whom were diminutive.  A guy who looked like the Journal's Bill Power was playing baseball nearby.  “That must keep him fit,” I thought.  My daughter Charlotte walked up to me, wondering if it was too late to phone in a correction to an article in the long-defunct Newark Evening News.  She held a piece of paper with some dirt or string on it that contained the correction.

Last night I dreamed that Trump was elected President and I joined a citizen militia whose goal was to hide and care for illegal immigrants. I had a gun and everything, and we were hiding people away in little houses in the middle of the woods. In the dream I was like, wow, I never thought this day would come.

In my dream, Barack Obama (who was not president, but a scientist) told me to apply for an NEA.

Like Deer

I am jogging with George.

We are running along a country lane.

We don’t talk. He is slightly

ahead. There is a hedge

on the left. I feel like he wants

to go that way. I might want

to go that way, too. He turns

left, right into and through

the hedge, which is velvety

and dense like a dream. Maybe

it will work for me. I turn. It is

thick and sticks to me

like flesh. I emerge slowly,

can barely move, have hedge

all over me like caterpillar

fur or armor or a new layer

of me. George is moving well ahead

up a path between the lawns

of two old properties. He is

nearing the trees. With effort

I pull off a few clumps.

My stride and breathing loosen.

I catch up and we run

blithely through the woods.

Her Embrace

Went to the old apartment on Bedford.

It was gutted on the inside.

Walls torn out. New beams put in

in the basement. I used the old keys.

She comes in. I say something. She runs away.

I have to explain myself to myself

and leave. Across the street is the diner

everyone goes to. I am sure to see

the people I met earlier there. Or is it

a cemetery? I come to the town square

and start driving around it. The huge trees

on the green hang over the road.

She is on the green. I see her from

the side. She is on her way, striding even,

under the trees. This time when I go

around the square the car is out of control,

starts to slide off the road into the dark,

snow-covered arms of the trees.

I dreamt that I entered a large living room where many of my relatives were sitting.  My cousin Eve Lyman told me that her late father, Uncle Abe Chayes, was in an adjacent room, and that I should go and talk with him.  I entered the room, a very large room with a cathedral ceiling.  Uncle Abe was supposedly sitting on the couch in the middle of the room.  But it wasn’t Uncle Abe.  It was my long-dead father.  I asked Dad a question, and he said that the key to politics in this town was bowling.  If you could bowl high numbers in the bowling league (a fact that I had slightly forgotten about Dad), people would do anything for you.  Dad started to make a further point and stopped mid-sentence, like a jukebox that had run out of money.  He wasn’t allowed to continue, or wasn't able to continue.  It was very disturbing.

*

I dreamt that I had blown off my courses for most of a semester.  I was walking around the upper floors of a huge high school looking for my classes.  There was something Victorian or Gothic or both about the building.  I poked my head into a cavernous math classroom.  I couldn’t figure out where the class was in the textbook.  I couldn’t follow anything.  I continued down a hall and turned a corner, and saw another one of my classes through a glass wall.  I entered.  But they were having a little reception, drinks and pastries, and I had no real right to join them, and it wouldn’t help me catch up from being so far behind.  I went looking for another class.  It was supposed to be on the top floor as well, but you couldn’t access that area from where I was.  I took an elevator down to the first floor.  Looking for a way to get to the other part of the top floor, I wandered into two first-floor rooms, which were actually art galleries and apartments belonging to two young men.  It was surprising to find apartments in the school.  I stepped outside in front of the school, which looked like the front of my old high school, Columbia High School in Maplewood, N.J.  I looked up at the roof to see if I could figure out where this other classroom was.  Indeed, there were these glassed-in sections that bloomed on parts of the roof.  Now, I had to figure out where the elevator was that would get me to the correct glassed-in section.

*

I dreamt that we were leaving a vacation spot in Maine where we had shared a house with another family.  Their baby was sleeping in the big back room.  Someone had awakened it.  Maybe me.  And the mother had puts notes all over the place, warning people not to wake the baby.  What should we do today with the little time we had left?  Where hadn’t we gone?  Schoodic Point.  The rocky coast right nearby.  We decided on the rocky coast.  Before that, we stopped at an ancient church.  As we left, someone wondered if the church’s ancient objects would be distributed to the other German churches in town, where they had been originally located.  I said this church had a special status and could keep all the objects. A local sitting near the exit agreed.  We both agreed it was nice the church was so ancient, though I added it would be better if it were even more ancient, truly ancient, say, built in 600 A.D.  I crowded into the other family’s car, which was parked very near a red car.  As our friend gunned out of the parking lot, he scraped the red car.  He wasn’t aware of it, but I could see the people in that car were.  The car followed us, making a big turn on someone’s lawn.  The car turned into a frightening power-company or phone-company vehicle.  It could do a lot of damage to us.  But it headed down a street with low overhanging wires, which it could never get through.  We ultimately parked somewhere and I cleaned all of our stuff out of the back of their car.  They were heading back to Cambridge, even though it had snowed a lot there.  Before they left, I ran back to the car and shook the guy’s hand and said, “Great spending time with you, let’s do it again.”  I was glad I hadn’t forgotten to do that.

I dreamt I was walking on a residential city street late at night, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.  A police car suddenly pulled up next to me.  Even though it wasn’t pot, I chucked the cig, so there wouldn’t be an appearance of impropriety.  The policeman emerged covered from head to toe in high-tech armor, especially his head.  He looked like a gigantic insect or alien.  I gasped in fear.  He reached for his gun and said, “What?”  “You frightened me,” I said.  He took me to a mobile outdoor police station, basically a vehicle with an open trunk.  Several other perps waited there to pay fines and fill out paperwork.  I only had to fill out paperwork.  There was no fine for me, which was slightly surprising, but seemed right, since I hadn’t done anything wrong.  As I was leaving, the cops asked if I had seen much tennis lately, which was also slightly surprising.  I told them very cheerfully that I had played a lot of tennis and hoped to play more.  Then I walked away into the late, late night.

  

*

I dreamt I was sitting next to an Italian guy on a bench in Venice.  We started talking to each other in Italian about Italian poetry, going through all the great names.  I mentioned Giovanni Pascoli, to his delight, then Guido Gozzano.  Then, we turned to Eugenio Montale.  He said that late in life Montale had frequented places like this.  He pointed to a twisting covered passageway with an outdoor restaurant by the entrance.  “Montale would eat a hamburger at a place like that.”  I decided to eat there.  A waitress came up to me.  We spoke Italian.  I struggled to communicate with her in exactly the same way that I would struggle to communicate with someone in Italian if I were awake, making the same language decisions, the same compromises to communicate something.  I ordered a hamburger, but then was surprised when a waiter brought a bowl of soup, which didn’t have much soup in it, but was “all crackers.”  I hoped it didn’t cost much.

*

I dreamt I was visiting my mother, who died four months ago.  She was dying in a big bedroom upstairs in a suburban house.  I was very upset, thinking she was about to die, but then she seemed a little better.  I went from there to a Camp Kennebec reunion at a party place.  Not connecting with the people well, I wandered into another room, downstairs, that I thought was part of the same party.  But the kids were really young, the boys short.  It must have been a bar mitzvah party.  I walked out of the catering place.  On the way down the long driveway, I encountered my friend Peter Saenger.  I walked with him back into the catering place.  Inside, I noticed a program for a classical-music concert that would be taking place shortly.  It was an amazing program, with many pieces.  Sadly, for me, it was sold out.  Peter Saenger had a ticket and went inside.  I picked up the program, thinking that if I saved it, I would remember to go to the concert next year.  I wandered into a gift shop.  It occurred to me that I would wind up putting the program somewhere and forgetting it by the time the concert came around next year.  Maybe I should just throw the program away.  As I walked out of the gift shop without buying anything, I worried they would think the program in my hand was something that I hadn't paid for, but no one bothered me.

Long conversation with Peter Culley two nights ago in a dream. Going over the 1970s, sharing his secrets. As always, with Peter, a deep feeling of ease and affect. He was, since the first moment, "uno di famiglia," a member of the family. There is a spot in the front yard where we all stood during his last visit to Bangor -- it feels occupied as if something had been planted and is just about to burst from the ground. Any moment now. Always now.

Dreamt that they bombed Upaya North. Not sure who they is/was. But in the dream, Upaya was this cool looking library / classroom w/ media. I was teaching my final class of a workshop for the term. And we had to move to the Ginsberg Library due to the destruction. GL was this amazing space w/ a spiral staircase that went to a basement and the decor was 1970s chic. And the walls were red. A plush fabric. With funky bean bag chairs. And beads at doorways or on the wall. With green accents. And the students performed a somatic symphony. On a stage. In the library. I can still hear the cello.

Nightmare I was writing a research paper on midcentury modern furniture and I had four sources: a chair, another chair, a chair, and an iPhone upholstered to look like a midcentury modern couch.

Last night I dreamed friends were coming for Thanksgiving dinner. I was in a penthouse where I had never lived before, and I wasn't sure how many people I'd invited or when I'd told them to come. Things had been complicated because I'd just been involved in a train accident (not my fault) although I was able to recover my computer, but not my guitar, which was both unfortunate and fortunate, because I was due to give a concert with the poet Elaine Equi (which is why I was on the train) and I hadn't rehearsed at all. Were Jewish friends coming for dinner, could I somehow get a kosher turkey in time? Here it was already noon, and I hadn't even done the shopping. How was I even going to get a turkey, much less a kosher one, at this late hour? Harry Kresky, a friend I like but never see texted me with the question: "Is it at 1?" My God, how many friends had I invited? What was I going to do? Akram and I went quickly to shop. We were going to have to buy a lot of wine too to keep guests busy doing something—my plan was to get them all drunk—till all the food was done. Maybe they'd let us borrow a shopping cart at the supermarket to get everything back to the penthouse. Turkey, yams, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes—Yikes! Outside was like a suburb of Shanghai near the water or maybe more like a favela in Rio. Either way, where was a supermarket? And could I speak the language? The alarm clock rang. Have I ever been so happy to wake up? Well, I have. Usually I am trying to catch a plane for Paris with endless complications getting to and being at the airport (usually there is marijuana in my luggage when I am going through customs and how am I going to get rid of that?—Quick, to the bathroom!), or I am about to teach a class I haven't prepared for and have to ad lib the whole darned curriculum. Thanksgiving dinner is a new one. Must be the season. I am going to the gym to do the bike, lift some weights, have a nice sauna and sweat whatever the heck this anxiety is out.

Dreamt I was the principal dancer in a ballet version of Waiting for Godot.

I dreamt that a British couple was walking through the newsroom.  They were looking at our nameplates.  “Who are these people?” one of them said, as if we weren’t there.  I had a feeling the woman wanted one of our jobs.  I started talking to the woman, who also turned out to be a poet.  I sensed that I seemed shameless to my fellow workers.  The woman and I went for a walk outside.  I asked her about her poetry.  While I couldn’t understand her accent perfectly, I gathered that her tastes were Victorian.  I said we seemed to be on the opposite ends of poetry.  During the walk, the woman became worried she would miss her subway, a G train, which ran above ground like a suburban train line.  I said we would be able to see it coming over the landscape.  We avoided a wet area, then bent low to walk underneath a weeping willow.  I asked if she knew my old friend Roland Vernon, a British novelist.  She didn’t.  At a house we entered, the phone was ringing and water was boiling on the stove, but no one was home, which was very disturbing.

*

I dreamt that the poet Peter Gizzi came to see me at my childhood home in South Orange, N.J.  I pulled up some chairs near where the outdoor playhouse used to be.  I had a messy bag of rolling tobacco, from which we harvested cigarettes.  He asked me if switching from working part-time to full-time had made me more bourgeois.  I said I didn’t think so, but that something else had.  I told him that when I was working part-time in South Brunswick, N.J., I sat next to a guy named Bob Cwiklik.  My mentioning Bob conjured him up, and he joined us on the chairs under the giant white pine.  One day, I said, Bob and I were walking to get coffee, and he said to me, “I don’t know if you realize this, but your assets are losing value every day.  Have you been to Europe lately?  The dollar doesn’t buy anything.”  The implication was that the eroding value of my assets—and the need to do something about it—was what had made me bourgeois, which was totally untrue.  At that point, we went into the house, which was different from our Montrose Ave. house, more a warren of rooms.  I lost track of Peter, then I gathered that he had encountered my wife, Louisa, and she didn’t recognize him, which upset me.  I shot into the dining room to prevent another faux pas.  Soon, Peter had to leave.  He was going to walk back to the train station in South Orange Village.  It wasn’t the same walk that it used to be, but flatter and shadier.  As we stood near my back door, it started to drizzle.  It looked like it was going to rain hard.  I offered Peter an umbrella, insisted that he take it, but he was sure that he didn’t need one.

The Paris Air Show of 1922

In a dream, I am in an old mansion basement, feverishly scrounging through boxes of old pamphlets, on a table, as other collectors and dealers are doing likewise at my side, when I happen upon an old booklet, bound in limp green leatherette, showing a picture of a bi-plane tilted up in flight. The pilot, his head encased in a form-fitting leather cap, and large goggles, is seen waving from the cockpit towards the viewer. Across the top of the cover, it reads, in darker green, “S O U V E N I R – Paris Air Show 1922.” In the dream, I wake up and go downstairs to the computer to see if there really was a Paris Air Show in 1922, and to my surprise, there was! Later, I “really” wake up and come downstairs to see if there really was a Paris Air Show in 1922, thinking if there really was one, that would be some kind of wonderful coincidence, since air show pamphlets, and aviation generally, aren’t subjects that I've ever dealt in as a book trader.

I discover that the Paris Air Show (or “Salon”), the world’s oldest and largest, originally was begun in 1909. There was a Paris Air Show in 1921, but I can’t find a record of one in 1922. In the seventh (1921) show, a prototype of the so-called French Breguet 19, based on a World War I light bomber, powered by a Bugatti engine, was first shown. A new design of the same craft flew in March 1922, but it doesn’t say where. It was the model for the French Army’s Aéronautique Militaire from September 1923 on. It was used in the Greco-Italian War, in World War II, primarily as a reconnaissance aircraft. It was used by a number of European countries, as well as some in the Western Hemisphere.

 

Breguet 19

 

 

 

 

 

 

Did I once see such a booklet, or did I conjure one up in my dream? The obsessive book scout in me is perfectly capable of inventing such an object. I go back to bed, hoping to return to the scene I have created in my imagination. Perhaps I am fantasizing that I can bring the imaginary pamphlet back from the dreamworld into the real one. Or perhaps I am simply enjoying the experience of having made something up that has a probable counterpart in the real world. Thus, my writing this account--a prosepoem of the dream--is a partial realization of that desire.  

My unconscious is sending me a message, whose secret meaning I may never be able to decode. This vicarious desire—expressed as a vague longing in the murky semi-consciousness between sleeping and waking--that my experience in the imagination might actually have happened--is like a dream come true.

In my dream a record was playing. It was the youthful, ebullient Billie Holiday of the 1930s singing an unfamiliar song. She sang the lyrics: "Although you left me behind / You're still one of a kind."

I dreamt that I was taking a train with my dead father and my younger sister, Liz.  We sat in the front car, where we could see very well out the bus-like windshield.  Dad started to have a heart attack.  His face—it wasn’t really his, but that of a thinner guy—turned very red.  We tried to get the train to stop, so we could take him to the hospital, but the train was an express and wouldn’t stop for a half-hour.  I argued with the conductor.  We sped through local stations.  It was ridiculous.  Dad was lying on the floor.  His face was very red.  Then he died.  As soon as he did, his body vanished in the blink of an eye, like magic.

*

I dreamt that a brilliant orange and white bird was flying around above a suburban street.  It perched on top of a streetlight.  I had the feeling it would fly into my arms.  I opened my arms, and sure enough, it flew to me.  In my arms, it wasn’t orange and white, but furry brown like a bunny.  There was another bird, too, that flew to me.  I took the second bird back to the place where I was staying, a big suburban house that reminded me of one on Irving Ave. in South Orange, N.J., a few blocks away from my childhood home.  The bird lived there for a while, flying around the downstairs rooms, but then decided it was time to leave, so we let it out the door.

*

I dreamt that my former brother-in-law, Larry Travis, was getting married in a reception hall in Iraq.  Larry made a little speech in which he alluded to something that happened to Jack Kennedy and Jackie.  As I stood outside, smoking, it suddenly occurred to me, “This is Iraq, it might not be so safe.”  I looked around.  From where I stood, I could look down several outer-borough-type streets with relatively low buildings.  I didn’t see anything special.  A few ordinary people.  But when I focused intently, on one thing after another, the scene felt menacing.  I realized that problems could suddenly emerge from a number of directions.  Back inside, a young woman called a group of us together in a small room behind the reception hall.  She asked us, “Do any of you want to get out of Iraq?”  I think several of us indicated we did, including me.  Then she asked, “Are any of you Jewish?”  This was a confounding question, partly because several of us obviously were, and she seemed Jewish.  I wasn’t sure how to answer.  This might be a trick question, designed to identify with certainty a Jew, who would then be killed.

Last night: Dreamt a downtown Manhattan that I'm not sure ever existed. In colors that I AM sure never existed. Anywhere. In any Universe.

A bear playing a harp in a field of lava rocks (my dream last night) -- in Grindavik.

After insomnia: strange dreams. I worked in an institution that was a maze with cafes and shops. To enter, one had to strip in a DRs office, wear a hospital gown, and then was given a box lunch of paraphernalia. Apparently, I was leaving said institution because I hugged everyone I passed in the hall and said: if I don't see you, goodbye. Heather Sweeney was married to a cartoon dictator. Amy Arenson made jewelry with beach glass. A table was littered with flower buds. Someone remarked: everyone's poetry here is too much in the head.

It started like a typical teaching anxiety dream--I had an hour to prep for the first day of a class I forgot I was teaching--but then a glowing woman sat down beside me and started buying me lovely coffee drinks, and every drink also gave me several extra hours. It only took us a few minutes to determine that my whole class would be based on using cooty-catchers to organize your writing and get rid of writer's block. The rest of the time we just flirted and talked about the really interesting book she was writing.

woke up with a poem about Hannah Wilke in my mind. I wrote it down. Don't know if it works. Strange, only met her twice--but her art, of those last years as cancer leached her beauty--is very difficult to see. Very difficult. Maybe it's all the bird song. I remember she had birds in her loft.

We stole a tugboat, not exactly a tug but a boat that was old wooden and boxy - one cabin - as in most of the boat was that one cabin. Was with myself and 2 women friends of varied identities - they were always the same 2 women tho at one point one was a boy - but that was nothing to remark on and she was a woman again. I knew we’d make it if we hurried - we had a place to go, an apartment, a hideout, on Fountain north of Hollywood Blvd. - tho no locale was specified I was seeing it as Fountain.  We were on a big blue remote lake 15 minutes from Hollywood of the 70s.  I used a color stick on my hair, threw packaging in the wastebasket, shouted Should we take out the trash - eliminated evidence of our presence there - I was always aware we had a destination, rescue, a way out and that we should get off the tug. At one point I was in the water swimming to another shore though. It was nice to be swimming but I wasn’t doing the crawl so much as some sort of active floating. Treading? The water was good. Dark blue and the right kind of cold but I was aware it was not pristine. Instantly and "off camera" fishermen brought me back to the tug (kind as the fishermen who rescued Jeremy Renner in Bourne or it might have been Matt Damon). Thing is I had elaborate knowledge and was frustrated my friends didn’t and didn’t care. I imagined the tug owner's personality and likelihood she'd detect our presence - and wanted the hell to just get off it and move on. Prior to commandeering the tug we didn't commit a crime.  So much thinking ON the water (in retrospect). Worry frustration detailed knowledge unheeded by the carefree, awareness of the adventure, the voyage, the trip, the possible hideout funky and sunny. Redux on the prior - a winding road.

Last night I dreamed I was beatboxing to an entire stadium full of people. The crowd was on their feet. They were loving it. I woke up covered in slobber, but I felt proud. I still feel proud; I'm carrying that feeling throughout the day.

Fell asleep last night in front of CNN: in my dream Giordano Bruno and Lenny Bruce were discussing the state of the Universe.

Fragments of three dreams from this morning: 1. Karen is pregnant, and the doctor assures me (without evidence) that I'm the father. 2. I return to my old workplace to retrieve enormous piles of my personal possessions, mostly books, all of which are stored in Denis' office (his official one, which he doesn't actually use). 3. The entire movie, It's a Wonderful Life, with Alan Alda as George Bailey, ending with a monster coming out of the woods and down to a stream during the credits—then the image freezes and the voiceover announces the remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon will come out next year.

Bested by the tropics, after a harrowing no AC cab ride during which the driver pulled over no less this five times to ask for directions to a relatively near destination, I fell into a strange sleep of perhaps the most menacing dream-hallucinations I have ever had, experiencing other people's and my own most profound viciousness: there was a party, many friends were there but seemed sinister, one (a married person) pressed himself lustfully against my back body, another man not a friend flicked a cigarette into food I was eating and then freaked when I confronted him on it, accusing me in an almost hebephrenic way of "privilege", I and others flew/swooped around the room, a kind of dark loft space, and I reached into the mouth of someone who offended me and bent his front tooth completely forward. And these are only the incidents I vaguely recall. Yangon in this season is truly dizzying and the weather seems to act as hallucinogen. Much respect and compassion for the people who must withstand it daily, and cook hot food at their roadside food carts or drive boiling taxis in diesel smog, triply dazed by betel nut and centuries of oppression.

also I dreamed last night that the smithsonian had a wing for riot grrrl. but it was kind of decrepit and in need of upkeep.

From the dream files: dreamt last night I was in Portland watching a man with walk down the street, no pants just tidy whiteys , suit jacket on top. He was wearing a baseball cap, ZZ Top beard and sunglasses on the back of his head, and had long should-length grey hair.

Last night, I dreamt that Vanessa Place was my physician, and I visited her for some now unrecallable ailment. I can't remember exactly what she said to me in the dream -- probably something like this from her @vanessaplace2 Twitter account: "Wanting to be a poet is like wanting a bad cough," or "All you are is either a symptom or material." Or this from an interview at Fanzine: "All we are are our symptoms, and we do love our symptomology…".

bizarre dreams update: just before waking today, the last dream i had featured badgers the size of and seemingly crossed with leeches that lived under pieces of wood. i was out in a dreamtimish area working with a small group of people when i first discovered these ferocious mini beasts, and the dream ended as Rani Ji & i worked in an area away from the others, by a road where i moved a piece of wood and 2 or 3 of these beasts came after me (while Rani was laughing, i was scared).

I was scheduled to perform 3 or 4 songs with an old friend in a small NYC performance space - somewhere I've never been or seen in real life.  There were a lot of people there. I was going to be playing the guitar, and the songs were originals that I had written with my friend. As it got closer to playing time, I could not remember the songs, could not retrieve or piece together the chords, progressions -- it was just outside the grasp of my memory.  The songs could not be performed without my part, so we ended up having to cancel the performance, though I know it was a terrible disappointment to my friend. I realized that I could no longer ignore all the signs and indications that I had previously been ignoring: I definitely had Alzheimer's.

The dream encompassed many foreign locations... a bus breaking down and the driver abandoning us... Philip Larkin was somehow involved... a missed opportunity for banter on my dreaming self... and i recognized him by the back of his head and ears along? (what?) I was also riding a steel dragon...

In my dream I was watching an opera on television. Already this was strange, as in waking life I'm utterly uninterested in opera. It appeared to be a nineteenth-century Italian opera. A pair of twins—short, fat, bald, dark Sicilian-looking men in Renaissance costume—were singing an aria in unison. I knew that they were singing about guilt, but I don't know whether this was because I understood the words or was familiar with the libretto. Then I realized that one of the twins had just realized that the other twin was not his brother at all, but rather a manifestation of his own guilty conscience.

At this point, Roberto Benigni, the Italian comic actor, appeared on stage singing the same aria. He seemed startled and upset by the presence of the bald twins. He made exaggerated comic gestures that signaled his fear, as if in a silent film comedy. He ran to the back of the set and hid behind a curtain, then peeked out at the twins with an ambiguous smile on his face. At this point I could tell that Benigni had realized that the twins were not real people, but rather representations of his own guilt. This liberated him to leap out from behind the curtain and continue singing his aria. The twins had disappeared. 

The perspective in the dream then shifted from the stage set on TV to the room in which I was watching the program. There was another man in the room, sitting in a chair with his back to me. He was a large, bald man. I had no idea who he was.

"What am I feeling guilty about?" I said to the back of the man's head.

A longstanding, recurring dream about tornados appeared in a new form last night. This time it came in waves, and I was caught guard down with nowhere to be except in the place I was standing. I lay on the floor and waited...

photo by Elizabeth Bryant

Susan Legind collage, "It Was Just a Dream," as posted to Collagistes Collective on Facebook:

A dream where I cannot sleep and end up at my psychoanalyst’s house. She is doing a dance of some kind of dance to demonstrate something to me, to elaborate on something she had used words to say earlier. Also her husband is there. He is an older man with gray hair and a beard, bald and in a disheveled state. He is sitting at their computer and uploading songs to something like a USB or an iPod, and says something about doing it for her because of the road trip she or they are taking soon. Later we are standing on her balcony and discussing music, and she is telling me why she loves the composer she had danced to earlier, and I say “so you don’t like the atonal stuff?” and she shakes her head. The composer she likes is a man with an n and an o in his name but that’s all I can remember. I stumble around their house in the early dawn with the light dim and everything kind of blue in her apartment. Her son and his wife are sleeping in one room. I don’t get to the room she and her husband with grey hair and beard are in. I end up outside in an area that is vaguely Milwaukee’s east side Oakland Avenue-ish. I end up back home with an electronic device near my bed which is very low to ground.

Last night I dreamed I went to the White House to meet Obama and he took me down in the elevator into this hi-tech sub-basement and showed me his vintage collection of centuries-old breakfast cereals. They were all sitting out in the open on a steel table, and each one was in a weird sack or bag with buffalo bill steampunk letting printed on the package. He said "I try a different one every morning."

Dreamed that two poets "covered" (remixed? remade?) Bombyonder, one as a graphic novel and the other as a vinyl LP.

I had a dream that was basically a game like candy crush saga but instead of candy there were words and you had to slide them around to make lines of poems

I definitely do NOT want to open a bar called Apathy + Protest for the 27-28 yr old demographic, but that's what I dreamed I was doing

Dream that eyelashes were falling out or in some places, ingrown. Got tweezers from an old woman at a party. Woke up before I was about to stick the tweezers into my eye. Un Chein Analou redux? Oedipus?

Just before sleep Carla reminded me that yesterday was the anniversary of my father's death. I promptly dreamt that a book on biopolitics cited him, thanking him for answering queries on the point of death. When I woke up, I started to look for that book, then realized it had been a dream. Then realized the whole scenario was a dream: the stroke left my father paralyzed, without speech; there was no answering queries at that point. (Even so, I'd really like to find the book.)

was left at the altar in this morning's dream

I'm having an affair. The guy carries 3 guns & wears a bra. He is New Jersey governor Chris Christie. Did I mention this was a dream?

Had a dream last night that I had a tiny silk moth that followed me around as a pet; I would have to tell people to be careful not to sit on it or inadvertently crush it. It understood human speech, but only Japanese.

I had a dream last night; I was hovering over giant mountains of ice and snow and could move at will...it was breathtaking and beautiful and like nothing I had ever seen (except in other dreamscapes). At first I wasn't afraid but it was so "out of this world" I became fearful, and woke up.

i dreamt i was on a battleship. as we descended into the hold and the walls shook as the missiles were deployed, we passed a door behind which the composer Steve Reich was working on a project called "Sun."

I dreamt I was walking briskly away from a guy with whom I had just talked briefly.  I passed my wife, Louisa, who was standing waiting in a large, dim living room.  I said to her, “I’m going to lock myself in there and try to figure out something.”  I closed the bedroom door behind me and quickly locked it.  It was very clear to me the guy was going to follow me, soon, and stab me to death with a knife.  I looked around for a weapon.

*

I dreamt I was returning to the place where I had committed a murder in a previous dream.  I was afraid I had left my gun and my black leather traveling bag at the scene of the crime, and I wanted to retrieve them.  I knew it was a bad idea to go back, it could backfire on me.  And it might not matter if the gun were found.  Still, I was going back.  I was crossing through backyards like in my hometown of South Orange, N.J., behind the Gianottas’ house.  What if some kids saw me by the house where the murder took place?  I bent low to the ground.  The house itself was like a place in one of those impoverished Buffalo neighborhoods that Sam Truitt and I drove through a few months ago.  I entered the back of the house and then, to the left, an alley-like room where the murder had occurred.  Neither the gun nor bag was there.  The room was trashed, filled to shin level with balls of crumpled paper.  Leaving, I passed a real-estate lady out back, already showing the place.  Life was “moving on” surprisingly rapidly after the murder.  This is a dream idea I’ve had before, the murder that’s never really investigated, which derives from Gombrowicz’s Pornographia and Bolano’s 2666.

*

I dreamt that my college friend Gary Lovesky and some of his friends had visited me.  Now, they were leaving in their car.  Back inside the large house, a summer rental, a woman said I had missed a phone call.  I was waiting for a call.  I was waiting to hear my mother had died.  I almost yelled at the woman: “I was right outside.  Why didn’t you call outside for me?”  The phone rang again.  The woman answered it.  Something bad had happened, but not pertaining to me.  The woman’s face teared up.  It turned out a member of the Read family of Winter Harbor had been killed.  I thought it was a sailing accident.  But then, in a vision within the dream, I saw an explosion at a pizza shop send its huge stainless steel oven flying out the back wall, where it crushed the Read scion.  As I started to leave the living room, like our “first living room” at my childhood home in South Orange, a guy said something unpleasant to me.  “Shut up until you do some dishes,” I lashed back.  I returned to the kitchen sink, where I was finishing cleaning up after a big dinner.  Some punks followed me into the kitchen and said I was going to get beat up.  I agreed heartily, “No way I’m strong enough to beat him up,” which took them aback.  In a large added-on room with a high triangular ceiling, a young yachtsman began talking to me about races.  He said that in high seas rocks could slide off the coast and jump a couple of times, posing a real danger of smashing your boat.  He headed off to another race.  Then, in this large room, an action hero appeared.  My pursuer came to the entrance of the room.  The campy hero leaped on him, crushed him and then strode through a narrow doorway, with Slim or Thin written on the back of his robe, and someone saying, “That’s why they call him Thin.”  Pursuers set off after the action hero.  I followed their dogs, which tracked him into the sewers like in the movie “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.”  They seemed to lose his track, but then they spotted small tracks on the wet floor, turtle tracks.  A woman pointed to a small drain, said a turtle could escape through there.  It worried me for a second.  Then, something eased my worries.

*

I dreamt I was at a big suburban house like my childhood home.  The doorbell rang.  A delivery guy was there with a huge box, too large for me to carry inside.  Luckily, the delivery guy was a real muscleman—and acrobat, spiderman and human butterfly.  He leaped into the air and stuck to the wall in the front hall, nearly naked now, flexing garish muscles with tattoos.  In the process, he had become much smaller, half the size of a human.  He left the box in a hallway that didn't exist at the Montrose Ave. house.  I couldn't move it.  Later, it turned out that what had arrived was a large, furry dog, almost motionless.  They've all tricked me into getting a dog, I thought.  I didn't feel that I could return it. 

Last night, I dreamt I was attending a "baton twirling" conference & I was staying in a boarding house & I caught TS Eliot at midnight stealing doughnuts from the kitchen & he shyly apologized & then murmured "you can call me 'El'"

I was on the roof of a hotel in New York with my friend Ryan Wugalter. We were  looking at the stars and talking, when suddenly there was an intense meteor shower. When it was over, we climbed down a long yellow ladder with a rickety fold-out section called a “keith.”   At the bottom of the ladder, we met up with several other people, mostly our friends from university. We all walked down the wide, cushy hotel halls to a Japanese restaurant that made you a pay a cover charge that was different for "public" or "private" seating; we paid for the cheaper public seating, and it meant we sat with strangers, so we lost a fair bit of our party at this point. The food was rows of little nubbins like plasticine. When we left, I had trouble getting all my correct checked stuff: bag, sweater. I had my laptop case with a shirt and a bunch of books, I think. There was a Japanese bookstore. I told the worker in the store that I couldn’t read Japanese, although I thought the lettering was beautiful.   Next I was eating breakfast in a ground floor apartment in New York when first my mom, and then a stand-in for my mom, had a new boyfriend who was demonic. He was a professor, and he had long, white goat ears. They disappeared after I complimented him on them. I decided to pray, which filled the room with a golden light, and as I continued, it caused the demon professor to melt into a greasy puddle, which eventually disappeared. There were also two little kids there who were demonically afflicted, and I prayed for them, but it was only partly effective.   inoticed on the deck or terrace that my wife was tied up and being tortured by a gang of youths. I brutally beat a few of them trying to save her, picking them up by the legs and swinging them, smashing their heads into hard surfaces.

Dreamed a new federal law required all TSA screeners to be fluent in the work of Philip K. Dick.

In my dream last night I was on another planet and was receiving a lesson, or being told how impractical it was that we lived on Earth in flesh suits that you couldn't take off. I was shown how on their planet you could unzip your flesh suit easily, or sometimes you didn't wear the suit at all. So I did this, and all of my organs were being interviewed, as if each organ was an individual, going to the doctor, getting a "check-up." I completely understood how sane it was to want to see your own machinery, so as to visibly register when something had gone askew. When I woke up, I began to think of the development of technology, of the covering of internal parts, so as to no longer see what was moving what, to no longer be able to dismantle a human being or a machine into parts, a seamless diaphanous flesh, which makes me think of hacking, and the retaliation against the surveillance of one surface, and the persistent action of breaking if not the human body, then all of matter, into discrete, and separatable elements.

Had a weird convoluted dream last night in which Charles Bernstein was explaining to me that home craft projects go much better if one makes one's own Elmer's Glue!

Had an amazing dream last night where I was hanging out with my friends Trish Harnetiaux, Jason Pendergraft, and Corey Stoll. Just like our early days in New York except everyone was famous, Jason smoked a cigar, and there was an elevator that went to the moon.

Last night I dreamed that cats attacked my hands after entering my wood paneled bedroom during a hurricane. My hands were scratched up and bloody. The cats sat on the bed hissing.

Dreamed last night I was in Louisville, to deliver a lecture I hadn't yet written, & was visiting Guy Davenport on a dark, snowy evening. He was congenial as ever--if strangely overweight--& excited to show me that he'd gotten rid of most of his vast library. Some walls were simply bare; other bookcases were absolutely groaning with newly acquired gardening books---big illustrated volumes devoted to particular families of flowers and plants.

two nights ago dreamed that I was out working in our tiny linear container garden along the side of the house when I glanced up and saw this huge, lovely turned garden plot in our back yard that I had never noticed before. "Why haven't we just been using that?" I asked Sikkema.

dreamed I unwrapped something like a Klondike bar and dropped its contents into a stream. Inside were three small blocks that turned into "Medusa swans" when they touched the water. I said, "they'll take care of the corpses."

last night i dreamed everyone had GIFs for tattoos, which made walking around distracting and dangerous...the next thing i know i was in line at the bank (which is weird b/c i haven't been inside a bank in years), when i finally got to the window, the teller was talking but only images came out of his mouth, and i was like WTF!, and the person behind me in line whispers "yeah, that guy only speaks in GIFs"

In the dream I seemed only slightly perplexed that I was growing a singular horn.

In my dream, some critter like a mad possum bit my finger and it hurt so much I woke up. My finger hurt like hell when I woke up, but no clue why or how.

dream: my father tries to call me from the airport. i answer the wrong phone. u tell me we have roosters, rabbits and a guinea pig. maybe a parrot. i don't want roosters. i'm in the men's dorm by mistake. they are all naked. i try to pretend like i don't notice. our apt. is leaking. i try to get towels. i'm twisted in an awkward position between tables and a man. i pry myself loose. a young girl is doing a television interview. she is wearing a black leotard. her breast is exposed and she doesn't know it. i think she will be so embarrassed. why didn't they edit it out. i want to tell her someone was videotaping me dancing once and the same thing happened to me. i never got to see the video for some reason. i am walking in a city. maybe it's santa cruz. i am so happy to be home where there is some activity, some life. the ocean air feels wonderful. i don't know if you're there or not.

Perhaps I have been thinking too much about a new project, which is about resistance against the compelling conviction that I am not allowed to stay. I dreamt of light. That a person I once loved wanted me to catch it and if I refused I would be killed. I managed to escape before the walls closed in and began hastily throwing my suitcases into the minivan. But there was no room for me. And so I ran to catch the train. Of course, when I arrived it politely passed by without me: Excuse me, miss. I resigned myself to die.

I dreamed my throat was crammed with sticks & I kept pulling them out one by one but there were always more.

dreamed I was taking an intro creative writing class, first day, and the instructor asked us all to free-write about "homes" from different perspectives, and I wrote down the words RED HOUSE and then started daydreaming, and when she called on my to read mine aloud and I said I hadn't really finished anything, she made fun of me and rolled her eyes and I wanted to say, "I have published several books, you know!" But I did not because RED HOUSE.

I also dreamed I had a pair of pet raccoons I had to carry around with me everywhere in a double-sided cage; they had these long teeth, though, that I had to file down every day the way you'd sharpen a knife, holding the raccoons and running their teeth up and down the cage's stone edges.

Triple nightmare last night: some kind of hippy family invaded my home from the hill above, threatened to sue me when I asked them to leave. I escaped them in my car but noticed the brakes completely stopped working, so I coasted through the lights which miraculously each turned green until I came to a stop on a hill. Then all these drivers started yelling at me to get my car out of the street. Things started to get ugly until we all got distracted by a giant rocket flying low around the city. We realized it was a nuclear missile and waited for the the detonation. But I did look up at the hill at my house, and the hippy family was gone.

There were two little red monkeys leaping back and forth over a snowy road. I somehow snapped the corner off my handheld communication device, but it still worked, and looked like molten glass and agate inside. A blond man in a white van made big gestures, which I pretended not to notice. A child was about to tell me something important, but we were interrupted when I woke.

In my dream I was listening to a generic vinyl reprint of a record by an early seventies glam band named Trash, a song called "We Can Take the Underground." It was pretty good.

dreamed I unwrapped something like a Klondike bar and dropped its contents into a stream. Inside were three small blocks that turned into "Medusa swans" when they touched the water. I said, "they'll take care of the corpses."

I had a Wes Anderson dream last night, that we bought an apartment on the top floor of the "Hotel Violin," (too much time spent with a violin restorer recently?). The building was an architectural dessert: art nouveau, gold leaf, pastels. The elevator didn't make it up to the top floor, so we took it as far as it went, pried the doors open, to go higher.

dream: with a wave of my hand the cyst on my chest falls off. then there is a parade on the beach in aptos. what is it for? a celebration of life. it is on my beach. it is going in the right direction. i dream inside my dream. i tell someone about my dream inside my dream but i am still dreaming. the back of an indian's head. black hair. denim jacket. i don't know who u are. everything is going to be fine. i have 3 male roommates. i've never seen them before. who told u u could live here. i don't want new roommates. i don't want to live with men. there is too much male energy in this house. i want u to leave. i wanted to be alone. i wanted peace and quiet. i'm sorry but u can't live here. i am trying to reach vhs tapes high on a dusty shelf. i can't quite reach them without maybe falling off the stepladder and breaking my neck. i take 3 little sample bottles of clinique lotion and an open nail polish bottle and throw them away. women are shopping. they are very fashionable. my mother says she wants to go shopping. women are buying bracelets. i don't like anything cold around my wrist. one is wearing a weird purple flowery hat. they are not finding what they are looking for. do they wear make-up or not and do they dance. can i still dance. i'm a bit shaky on my feet. i pick up a leather wallet that is kind of a book. it is a sample of a bookmaking class. the cashier says the class is in las vegas. why am i in nevada? i don't want to be in nevada. the air is clean. i don't care, i want to go to the beach. i want to go home. why is it taking so long to go home.