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1.

Forrest Gander, who is my former advisor, is looking at a shopping cart in a large parking lot. The front of the cart is facing him. There is a crowd around him, myself included. He is wearing an old school white nightgown that comes down to his ankles. He is psyching himself up for running and jumping (long ways) over the cart). He is barefoot. He runs a short distance and leaps up over the cart but his foot just barely touches the handle bar and he comes down on his hands and knees. Everyone rushes to help him up and I am moving his arm to get under him and lift. He was scratched up but fine. His eyes were huge like Montgomery Burns after his Friday night treatments on The Simpsons.

2. 

Another famous poet, who I won't name, is in what appears to be a high school hallway- very wide, etc. There is a man with a violin case (is there a violin in there? who knows) and this famous poet snatches the case, walks down the hall and slides the case into an office. "12000 of those things now."

She and I have some kind of side conversation but then we go and join a larger group. "It's about time I moved up in the conversation," she said to herself or me, maybe.

I read this article:  http://www.guardian.co.uk.lifeandstyle/2010/jul/24/assisted-suicide-dignatas-friends-story

This reminds me of a nightmare I had recently:

My family was all together in a place that looked like a large movie theater lobby/high school. Basically large hallways and double doors going into rooms.

We were all there, and a woman walked up to my Dad and said it was time. My Dad said something odd, like "Well, I guess I might as well get going!" and he walked into this large door with the woman. We waited maybe 15 minutes or something, when a large sign above the door lit up with my father's name. And my Mom was just like, "Ok, let's go!" and we left.

Walking out, there was a huge rush of people going in. It was like the airport or something, you know? Just a huge rush of people coming and going.

I woke up freaking out, crying.

FYI: My Dad's alive and well.

I was me. I was being introduced by Chris Merrill at Prairie Lights. I was about to give a reading.

In reality, I joked that I was a 'free agent' in the Friday afternoon workshop that the International Writing Program offers. By 'free agent', I meant that I did not belong to any organization and was sitting in on the class for my own edification.

Chris Merrill introduced me as the "A-Rod of 'free agent' poets in Iowa City."

After stepping up to the podium, I said I was more like the Andruw Jones of free agent poets: "Nobody wants me, but that doesn't make me any less awesome." The crowd laughed.

1.

I am in a large mansion. Many people who might be poets I've read are there. I once thought I saw Walt Whitman working as an orderly in a Minneapolis hospital while getting stitches in my head by David Copperfield, the magician. This mansion has a large ballroom, as all mansions do where all of these people are gathered. I am in a back room, being encouraged to urinate into a bookbag. With my penis drawn, I relieve myself into this bookbag.

Fortunately, I woke up dry.

2. Read 'No Exit'? My friend Juli and I are in a hotel room with a large window to one side. Actually, it might not be a hotel room at all. It's just a room with a door, two armchairs, and a large window. The color of the room is salmon/pink. There is a greenish trim. It looks like someplace old people go to die. Juli is standing in the center of the room as I sit in the chair. She is heavy bored. She suggests a party. I tell her we have no provisions, nor do we have anyone to invite. She suggests sleep. I tell her there is no where to lay down and I refuse to sleep in the suit I have on and refuse to be naked around her. Visibly upset, Juli suggests breaking the window to get out. I tell her there is no where to go outside the window: it is an illusion. She sits down in her chair, and I suggest we listen to some music. She informs me there is no music.

3.

Johannes Goransson and I are in a cave not enclosed on both sides. Just rock that comes over a small space with a stream that runs through the middle. There are fish in the stream and we are hungry. Johannes takes his flashlight and begins tying leaves together in order to fish with the new pole. Waiting, I imagine a new scenario. Suddenly, I grab the flashlight and start beating at the fish in the shallow stream. Soon, we are feasting on the raw fish, still withering between our teeth.

We owned this huge Victorian mansion somewhere and everything but us within it was "period", except for the implied use of electricity. I am standing in the upstairs hallway with an electric typewriter at my knees, attempting to rip the keys out with my nails. Getting nowhere, I took from the closet a chisel and hammer and began striking in between the keys in this manner. Despite the sparks and shards of a stone-like material, the typewriter remained in tact.

Running down the hall way, I am into a room with a desk and windows, one of which I open, and then grabbing it by the cord, dangle the typewriter outside of it. My wife is on the floor, begging and pleading with me not to throw it out as I simultaneously accuse everyone for making me drop it to a mangled pyre below. At the last minute, however, I break down, and crying, pull the typewriter back in and hold it in my arms, a baby. "I can't do it!" I scream.

Next, I am downstairs in the parlor (or what I assume now to be a parlor) where there is a carousel with a thick black cord running to a statue, her hands poised above a stone organ. Then, the statue began playing, but it wasn't just the organ: a whole band came out in the simple chords on the organ, all playing Sister Ray by the Velvet Underground. The carousel lights up and begins to whirr to the strains.

Leaning into the statue, my wife asked, "Doesn't she look like Laura Ingalls Wilder?"

"No! Of course she doesn't!" I responded. Then, as I leaned in for a better look, Laura Ingalls Wilder's face turned into a screaming ghost, like at the beginning of Ghostbusters.