dream # 18755

 
FIRE FIRE FIRE
I run thru the crowd screaming
and then they all turn and run
for the exits, streaming
FIRE FIRE FIRE
I keep yelling tho’ everyone else 
has stopped to look at me
only then do I see 
that the only one on fire is me
FIRE FIRE FIRE
I wave my arms 
jump up and down
but then I realize
no one else can see the flames

dream # 18995
A clam for attention

 
I stood behind her till a shift in posture told me she knew I was there.
I licked her neck, and she bowed her head.
I kissed her nape, 
and tugged, with my lips, at the loose hairs
until she winced and cringed and turned to me
 
	I have something important to tell you,
	It concerns Life and Death
But I notice she does not seem desperate,
So I am, in turn, depressed
	But not Love?
	But not Love she confirms.
	But not Love I wail
	But not Love she confirms
Without Love I complain
Life will not matter very much
And Death not at all.
 
She slips away from me
Then gracefully hops on one foot
Then glides around in a circle
Then sways toward me with a mincing step --
I think she’s doing ballet.
She’s telling me her urgency
With Dancing.
I don’t know anything about ballet,
I have no idea what she means.
 
She juts out her chin and breasts
And circles me three times
Feathering her arms and hands
Till slowly she repines on the floor
In a very deep curtsy
Where she is still.
I don’t know what to do
So I applaud.
 
The curtsy becomes a performer’s bow
Then she straightens up
And skips over to me and queries
	Then you don’t mind?
	“How could I mind?”  (What I don’t know)
“You don’t care!” she petulates
and paces off a distance
and stares away, arms folded, toe-tapping,
till I slink back behind her
till she knows I am there
and I lick her neck.

dream # 19022
circumambulation

… the waiter had just finished pouring my drink,
brandy from a mini-bottle, my second,
when my friend, and attorney,
came in with another friend,
whom I didn’t know, a young man,
and sat down at my table.
At length, after pleasantries, 
he turned to the young man, and said,
 “you remember that story
I told you about Harley
(a friend, it would seem, of us all)?”
he asked, with a smirk and a jerk-of-the-head
	towards me,
"When Harley was arrested for counterfeiting
HE had given him the quarter!"
                               And we all laughed,
for different reasons...
                        I loosened my tie
and finished my drink.

When the alcoholic glow had faded
I was walking with my old friend
(the attorney)
from the car in a big parking lot
filled with hundreds of people walking             
from their cars to a theatre.
	So many Sikhs.
	So many Sikhs.
	So many Sikhs in their starched white cozzies. 
	So many Sikhs.
	So many Sikhs.
	So many Sikhs in their starched white cozzies.
At the box-office 
my friend tried to gain free admission
as a journalist, while I waited,
but when he had to pay
he angrily disdained his change.
 
In the theatre, 
the front sev’ral rows were reserved
and covered in white slip covers
for Special Sikhs, I guess.
It was a Hindu film, with English sub-titles.
 
We were walking in a bazaar
stopping to admire every kiosk.
The place was packed. Shopping day?
One place in the mall
caught my eye, in particular:
floors patterned with inlays of gold & silver & ebon & bone;
displays of Hindu deities and totems
            cast in precious metals & jewels.
 
We bumped midriffs from not paying attention,
we braced each other to keep our balance, 
as if in an earthquake, it felt like that,
equal parts excitement, terror, & dread. 
Equilibrium restored,
I stared back at calm, amused, intelligent eyes, blue,
In a freckly, sandy complected face.
She took my arm and fell in step with me.
 
We were stopped abruptly, by a smiling man,
All sparkling, white teeth in a brown face,
“You don’t want to go yet! Come with me. Come with me.”
We followed him down a flight of stairs,
Not to a storeroom, as I suspected,
But to a wing seat in the auditorium
Where the film is in progress.
They pass a joint. It smokes easily,
Rolled well and tightly.
 
I get the munchies.
I go out to the lobby
Where, there on the phone,
I see Harley. He waves me over.
“Long Distance! Have you got any change?”
I gave him whatever was in my pocket.

dream # 19107

Ulysses shoulders his oar 
and turns inland, walking, he says, 
‘til he meets a landlubber who doesn’t know what it is 

Ulysses turns in amazement, 
props against his oar braced on the ground, 
wonders at each familiar sound: 
            the soft sususuration of zephyrs 
                  singing thru bare’d limbs, 
            the gentle polyphloisboios of puburella 
                  rippling under a breath 

Our shipmate, Heracles, 
is stagger-drunk again, 
belatedly remorseful, 
tries to pour his vodka back into the bottle 

The sweat, the spilled’ drink, and the tears 
stand out on his face like glycerin 
as he squints and swears 
and shakes and grins 
with a rictus 

“I’m no necroaesthete”  I bellow 
and at the table suddenly alone 
under a pinlight 
I sit 
with my face in my hands and moan 
“I just wanted into the funhouse” 

A horse-faced woman with prehensile lips 
kisses me wetly, 
sucks a quarter of my face at a time, 
nuzzles my neck, 
nickers and neighs 

The Homocubus wakes me 
with insistent demands that no one shares. 
As I walk thru the house 
it darts between my legs like a cat 
willing me to stumble at the tops of stairs 

I can see, alright, tho’, 
I can see by the light of a comet -- 
the shining hair that leaves a shadow – 
I see Ulysses’ oar & Heracles’ vomit 
& the horse-faced woman 
and the Homocubus 
as two as one.

trauma # 19227
Schlafen: vielleicht zum Traum

I feel like a fifth-wheel
with a couple of couples out for the evenin’,
they don’t know each other
but I know both women
 
We go into the jazz grotto, Indian-file,
down stairs in an alley with a smell that is vile
 
Raoul goes first, with a big man’s placid haste --
he has picked the venue, knows the band,  
knows a lot about jazz, considers
everything else a waste of time
 
Lilith follows, an interesting soul, 
an auburn-haired earth-mother nearly large as Raoul
 
Then Ernie, a tiny beauty with a raven page-boy
 
And Ellie, a small, intense ineffectual, 
dark, with an incipient unabrow --
he dislikes me seriously, I can tell
 
At the bottom she stands aside 
and ushers him in,
but holds me back like a cop-at-the-corner.
 
He gives me a look, but disappears inside,
and she says
“it’s dark & smoky, let’s go for a ride, instead”
 
“We’re already here,” I demur.
with one hand holding the door
and the other pulling her in
 I lead her to the table where drinks have arrived
and Ellie gives me a look
 
Raoul holds his drink
at a precarious angle
while his head bobs 
to the complicated
and jazzily syncopated music
 
Lilith & I go to dance:
	This is why I have come:
	to stand within her orbit
	and feel the tug of her
	attraction
 
	I breathe in her atmosphere
 
	I inhale her so completely
	she has to hold me away
	instead of close, the way
	I want her to hold me, effetely
 
	But she lets me lead her
	out where it is cool
	where I pledge 
	“You are the first and only!”
 
	But she laughs and pats my cheek 
	and leads me from the vestibule
	back to the table
 
Where Raoul has ordered another round,
And Ernie sulks
And Ellie gives me a look
 
I finish my drink
then ask Ernie to dance
            nobody else gives a fuck
            But Ellie gives me another look
as I lead her away, hand-in-hand, again
 
        she is all angry angles, this one
	with her stick arms
	and pipe-stem legs
	jabbing elbows & knees
	pointed hips, aquiline nose, flashing eyes, thin lips
 
	and every one a socket, I realize,
	to the Holy Flame
 
	when at last she locks her fingers at the back of my neck,
	hangs from her tip-toes against me
	pressing with her bony hips and her hard little breasts
	then I see, THEN I see
	myself plugged into miss kilowatt
	my back arched, rigid from my heels to my shoulder
	my tongue cloven to the roof of my mouth
	in an eternity of electro-locution
 
	“I will come with you, now,” I say,
	“I WILL come with you. . .”
 
So I lead her back to the table
where Raoul has provided more drinks:
an excellent host, even if inattentive,
devoted instead to 9ths, 7ths & 5ths
 
I polish off that last drink
while Ernie gathers her things
Lilith gives me a bovine benediction
and Ellie gives me a look
 
But as we start to leave
he grabs Ernie by the crook
of her arm
and says something to her that suddenly softens every corner she has
 
she gives me a look
 
so I leave alone
and Amishly walk into the night