night of 2/20/2012

1 i need to shit bad. i've moved into a dorm or run-down hotel with some friends and the squalor is unbearable, like a crack house, and the toilet is so filthy i have to look elsewhere. after wandering first into a hotel, then into an airport, finding only detestable toilets, i find a men's-room sign that leads me into the back rooms of the airport, stacked high with parts and machinery. i pass through one plastic-curtained doorway after another until finally a clean toilet appears. later i am retracing my steps in order to lead some others to it. now, though, the big back rooms are crawling with processions of hulks, either robots or men in heavy armor. we are forced to hide, and eventually to arm ourselves and fight. [i've had the dream of a search for a toilet before; in addition to filth, they also tend to have an exaggerated lack of privacy.]

2 i am in the audience of a trial. the defendant has produced an advertisement that has been found objectionable. (it involves a boat somehow; maybe promising it as a prize.) the prosecution exhibits other ad campaigns that accomplish similar goals, but are more tasteful. nearing the end of the prosecution--it's not clear that there will be a turn for defense--the prosecutor announces that the case will rest at 2:00 precisely, and he points to a clock high on the wall. it is encased in glass. the time is a few minutes shy of two. the judge, on this signal, throws a heavy object at the clock case, shattering it. i raise my hand and say i'd like to ask a question. (i did this once before, during the case, and was told to wait.) i'm aware that questions from the audience are unusual but feel compelled to try. now i am allowed, but time is almost up. "why didn't you set aside any time to discuss whether the actions of the defendant were in any way illegal?"

night of 2/14/2012

back to the house i grew up in. he's there, somewhere, maybe upstairs, but i don't see him. this after the apocalyptic change, leaving the world is demon-haunted. we can be possessed, absorbed, from anywhere: a wall, a street, a pool of water. i must act the right way in order to avoid drawing the demons' attention. the walls and the shadowed corners inside the house are likewise inhabited. after all this time, though, they are no longer horrifying. i need only act the right way: i can; I know how. this is simply what one does to survive.

night of 12/7/2011

i am high atop the cliff overlooking the cove. one of the creatures, something like a seal, has made the plunge into the water below, rocks tumbling along its scurry, and the predators hurry after. i've got d-- on the radio."it won't get much farther. over on the other shore, the hills are littered with their skeletons." i think of the expeditions i've taken, alone, deep into the wilderness there; the unending beauty of the valleys.shortly, d--: "try to guess where i am. bet you won't find me." i know he saw me on the cliff and can see me now, down among the buildings that squat like huge anthills, strung with metal catwalks and walkways. i am trying to triangulate his position when k-- appears, sudden, radiant."i'm not looking for you any more," i tell d--. k-- approaches and plants a kiss on my cheek by the corner of my mouth. it is electrifying. she is smiling and turns, walks away.

night of 10/19/2011

E-- K-- and I have both become poets. (I ponder on how, of all of us, it's turned out to be we two.) We are finishing our manuscripts, I in a room off to the side and E-- in the bigger room with the others. We finish at the same time and trade. I think mine's a little better, a little more polished, and the poems a little better too, though the styles are different. Well done. We trade back. I look at the last page and exclaim--damn, I missed a typo. There's a bigger problem, too--the very last line is dry and uses big words for no good reason--but I can complain about the typo without having to admit that aloud. A shame; to end, to leave the last impression, with some imponderable, impenetrable bit of jargon.

night of 9/24/2011

1.
I am with a mother-like figure; my mother in a different life. We are walking. She has her hand down the back of my pants. I am increasingly uncomfortable. She starts to put a finger up my ass. At first I just try to wriggle away; eventually I am sobbing, pleading for her to stop.

2.
We are assembled in a wide open bar, seated like a cafeteria. There are a lot of Buffalo Bills fans here. We have gathered to wish the Visitor farewell. He is a sharp middle-aged man with a goatee. Mostly my head is down over my food. He comes to my table. "In my two months here I have never seen you happy." He takes out a large plastic bag, and from it a complex assembly of chrome piping. "A gift--I know you like puzzles...you were published in that puzzle magazine." He slides one piece together, enclosing a sleek blade within one of the pipes, where it snaps. "Now it is ready."

night of 8/15/2011

a wall with square gaps between the bricks. i recognize the pattern from a playground of my childhood. a roadside pocket of grass beside tall buildings of similar brick. i pass it driving to my old home by an unusual route. back then we'd be driving home, my mom and I, and stop to get cash from a drive-through ATM, but also pull over for me to play for a while. a moment of peace. the ATM has been replaced with another, from a newer bank; no longer brick.

there's an old house here filled with old things, antiques. the whole family, now, all of us grown, is visiting it again. i'd never realized when i was young that the house was owned by our family; i'd always thought we were just checking on it, once in a while, when the owner was away. a sense of an old, kind woman. shelves and bureau-tops of very old heirlooms, now dusty, dust in the air lit by broad tall windows. a staircase with comically steep and shallow steps leads to a high, locked door we'd never entered. an acute corner of a wall abutting the playground, beside a window, has been extended by a few inches and then plastered over.

night of 7/9/2011

g--, a-- and i are traveling across the country. we're at some travel stop / downtown / amusement park. there's a hockey game and we watch a while, it's washington, ovechkin keeps scoring in impossible ways. (i have an ovechkin jersey on.) first he's outside the rink and gets a puck that jumps loose, puts it in the net which has a gap beside it. i say "i didn't know you could go outside the rink." then from a faceoff behind the goal he bounces the puck apparently off a piece of loose cloth, something impossible, we're all amazed, but on looking more closely there's a little gap near the crossbar none of us had noticed, so he'd just taken the obvious advantage.

then it's me and j-- who have been traveling. we're telling some folks about when we'd driven across the country before. "of all the forty states we saw--" (i realize i'm exaggerating, j-- is there, she'd know) "--well, thirty--i think oregon was the most beautiful. just gorgeous. vast arrays of waterfalls spilling from a distant line of cliffs--" (my arm sweeping grandly across this imagined view.)

among the many buffet tables and travelers there is an ongoing improv comedy show with an over-the-top kung fu theme. civilians are invited to join, or are tolerated. i am playing along and doing quite well. soon i am performing great flying kicks and smashing the prop furniture with abandon. (we're eating, too; a huge table is stocked with sushi and i do a soaring leap over a ledge to get down to it.) by the denouement i am the star, confronting the evil matron who is the family's betrayer. i prepare a great, roaring, palm to her forehead and after it lands, she is on the ground miming the pulsing gush of blood from her shattered skull, repeating a ridiculous spurting raspberry sound, and i start cracking up. it's too much. my body is convulsing from trying to hold the giggles down. i wake up still feeling bad for breaking character.

night of 5/22/11

my college campus, reconfigured. graduation? am-- and ed-- are there. i am heartbroken, stricken, down on my knees by a wrought railing. "i can't believe four years are gone." i've lost so much. am--: "it wasn't four. we left here decades ago. this is a reunion."

night of 5/15/2011

1

i am at the office which is a loose collection of cubicles and tables. behind me some ways is Ca-- who is having some trouble, jittering and shifting. i ask her is she's quit something; she says yes. i say i want to give her some advice but that it's a little strange: remember this time, this discomfort. (i ask: is it smoking? no, it's suger [unintelligible]. no matter.) a couple of weeks from now, you'll be doing better--still you'll suffer, but it will be better, more normal--and then you may think you're safe. you may slip. then is the time to have captured this suffering vividly, and recall it, and know you won't want it to have to come again.

suddenly there is some cataclysm. a bomb? people are running. i am separated from the people i know. i am in some other office building. alien spaceships are descending and buildings are crashing down. finally a group of us is holed up in a conference room. a father has a teenage child who is subject to fits, and somehow he's sitting on me when one starts. the father tells me i'll have to restrain him. i can do that, i was a wrestler. i bind his arms and legs. the fits can take several minutes. the boy turns and bite my shoulder. father: he'll bite. me: there was no biting in wrestling. finally the fit is over. i find that what i thought were wrists i was gripping were his ankles.

a series of disastrous crescendos begins. I look out into the dim exterior and see a mass of people beginning to run. An acidic rain sweeps over the land after them, dissolving whomever it touches. Then a great spaceship, filling the sky, swoops down until it stops just inches above the building. (I think: strange that it would stop just above *our* building; surely there are taller ones around? I begin to suspect I may be in a movie.) Then however the ship begins to pound on the top of the building, and the ceiling shatters.

Some of us run to another room; there are others already hiding here. After we calm down, the room suddenly begins to sway, then lurch. Suddenly I am outside the room and gigantic; I see a crane grabbing the room we were in, which turns out to be a shipping container with windows. No one is operating the crane. The crane throws the container against a wall, and I pick it up. I see some tiny movements but one girl lays before the window, obviously dead. I cry. Some of the others from the previous room find me, and I try to explain.

Later I meet the Hulk and I try to get him to help evacuate, but it doesn't go well, he's too dumb.

2

the protagonist from the previous dream (which is now obviously a movie, and is now someone other than me) is sitting at a desk and talking on the phone. he's wearing Groucho glasses but on closer inspection the nose is a penis. he says: "I'm casting a sex change movie!" his tone suggests hope for his career, but the text tells us that he's grasping at straws.

3

i've come to the hospital to discuss a vasectomy. i was masturbating in the car as i park it and expect to continue later, so i'd like to avoid the inconvenience of putting away my erection. instead i cover it as i walk into he hospital; first with my forearm, then with one of my shoes, which i hold against myself as if it were a natural position to trying to unlace it, which is apparently what my fiddling is supposed to resemble. someone laughs at me on the way in. i'm not really embarrassed; i wonder whether the laugh is because i'm doing something silly with a shoe, or because of the entire charade.

i've gone in the wrong entrance and have to backtrack. i turn a corner and see Me-- from high school. there with her is Ki--. I say: "Oh, fuck."

night of 3/31/2011

I'm in Vegas with T & G, but they're maybe still sleeping. There's a little casino in a wide-open dome or cone, with a hole in the middle of the roof like a yurt chimney. Perhaps it is enclosed in glass. I can fly but don't try to go out that way. Someone brusque wants to wrestle. It's been some time where I'd have secretly had a sure thing--I never looked much like a wrestler, but maybe I'm not much one any more--so I brush him off: what, right here on the casino floor? He wanders away. Just then someone comes to unroll a mat; all-comers are now welcome. Close one. Charlie Sheen is passing through; I meet him and he seems like an all right guy.

night of 1/1/2011

i am on a campus or station; broad and grassy; paths in trees i take nearby. i have been caught. ki- and someone else, af-'s mentor, has orchestrated this. my belongings are on a shelf, pictures and knickknacks.

now it is not i who has been caught but af-. his secondary copies are destroyed; he and his three primary copies are being frozen. as he is shut away his captor (who was his pursuer) pushes a worn quarter through a slot in the glass. the quarter means something to them.

back at the grass. ki- is examining the pictures on the shelves. (the pictures on the shelves remain mine. i don't know whether i want her to see that one is of her.) ki- asks if af- has had to pay, as expected. i tell her he's been mostly destroyed, the rest frozen forever. she is horrified, and now will help retrieve him.

af-'s hideout; banks and swirls of lights on the floors of the corridoors and rooms. they vanish when you pass over them. i appear to have a running tally of all those i've passed over. i am looking for clues but spend some time running over the strips of lights, the blinking numbers, the garish neon "newbie" signs that seem to designate points for the first-time player. somehow some information that af- has hidden, somewhere, will help to release him.

now on the way to af-'s mentor's house. (it somewhat resembles the grassy field but is also the inside of an expansive house.) many of af-'s friends and family are there. we need to think about how af- would have encoded secret information to be discovered later. i know "24" is important, even though it's a pretty easy one, and so i say it aloud. the tv turns on. if i say it again, the tv turns off. he'd used that as his remote control; the important data is going to be a lot harder.

i see af-'s little brother, whom i had not seen for years. he looks exactly like his older brother once did. i ask him how old he is-- "21." si- tells me that this question disgusts him; it is terribly insulting in their culture. then everyone laughs. their culture, after all, really is the same as mine.

night of 12/21/2010

1

i am staying in a bed-and-breakfast in a small dusty town. it's two small rooms across the hall from one another, two beds per room. [see: my house/bedroom as a child.] a detective comes in; he mentions he's looking for a fugitive embezzler, the one who's staying in that empty unmade bed over there. that's the bed i'm staying in. i appear to have amnesia. i know he means me. i keep mum. later janine comes--i don't know her, or she me. we take to each other. we plan to spend the next day in bed watching movies together on the little black-and-white TV at the end of the bed. we're getting ready. i don't want to get into the bed because then the detective (across the hall, who can see into the room with both doors open) will see and know who i am.

2

i'm driving on the highway and i have missed my turn. i remember how sometimes i used to do that when i lived in buffalo and i'd have to go over the canadian border, then come back across. fortunately you didn't need your passport in those days. now suddenly this is the mexico border; i'd better stop! i go under an overpass and pull the car over. there is a door in the foundation of the overpass, i go in. there is a woman in a uniform here. she starts speaking spanish. i realize i've entered mexico. a man comes in and i begin explaining my situation; i don't have my passport. the woman is examining the contents of my wallet.

eventually they are persuaded to help me. two toughs appear to help me carry the car into the doorway, down a path and across a stream, and finally up some rickety stairs that arrive at a deck edge that is the border. the three of us clumsily work the car up to the top. the two men jump immediately into a hole in the deck to return to mexico. i look down and see another man hanging by his neck. is he being executed? no, he's masturbating. others are preparing to asphyxiate themselves as well. looks like the beginning of an autoerotic orgy.

night of 12/12/2010

1
i am coercing a sunflower into a rose, for a magic trick where i will change it back. the petals are the hardest. i can't get them to curl and look natural. it is a physical process but i don't know if i use my fingers. finally i succeed well enough and perform the trick for a.; i pass my hand over the top of the flower and then release the change, and repeat for the length of the stem. a. is suitably impressed.

2
i am on a conference call, walking. i arrive down in the lab where the others are and we realize we can hang up the phone. i am being upbraided by e. for bad (lazy, naive) code. i have no conception of the right way to do it. i begin to describe my insufficiency in great detail, and apologize at length. this appears to be the end of the matter. e. has a face of a piece of lab equipment. his eyes are off center and consist of a two-digit LCD readout: 00. this is a sad look. e2. comes to hug him and he begins to sob.

i am walking out very distraught. i keep dropping to my knees as i try to walk. people can see and i'm not sure if i want them to. i'm not sure if i keep falling for show, or because i am genuinely weak with anxiety and shame. i come outside and fall again.

night of 12/8/2010

i am riding my bike back over the sandy yards of some beachfront shacks. it's new and shiny purple (like my kid's new bike). i slip in the gap of a misaligned fence and jam my bike. i have to extract first the front wheel and toss it out, then the rest of the frame. when i emerge the wheel is gone. i put the frame down to investigate it. soon the frame is gone too. it's obvious that the beach kids milling around are responsible. i begin beseeching them, threatening, yelling at them to give the bike parts back. mocking and disdain in return. i search for the parts and recover a few. it's getting late. i recall i have something like some classes to get to.

finally i recover most of the pieces hidden around the beach, and approach the two apparent ringleaders. two sandy blonds, slightly tan beach kids. they have marginally lazy eyes on opposite light eyes, mirrors of one another. i bend to study them closely, silently. one of them asks, "what are you doing?" "i am making sure i remember your faces. someday i will meet you again." this finally is enough to frighten them. one reaches into his pocket and produces the remaining pieces, segments of the chain. i dump all of the pieces into my shirt held up by the hem.

i walk into the house keening, sobbing. i glimpse guests down the hall, turning to see what the racket is. i run upstairs. i have realized on the way home (my old childhood home; the beach was also the main road in front) that i am in the process of missing my finals that day; the last of the three is just beginning and i wouldn't make it. also i didn't attend any of the classes all year. (the usual dream, except that i had some hope if only i'd made the finals.) that on top of the dismantled bike. janine says that j.(1) will be staying over. i don't know if she is embarrassed. i am embarrassed. i think she will disdain me, but possibly she is only trying to figure what to do. we'd recently sat with j.(2) who observed that i would resort to excruciating crisis to allow me rest and care.

night of 11/30/2010

a rain looms, and i get the car back just in time. our family has moved into the house where i grew up. i am battening the french doors in the kitchen and dining room, driving the bolts into the floor and ceiling to hold them against the storm. the hindmost door in the dining room hasn't been puled away from the wall in a long time; when i swing it shut i see lumpy masses by the hinge. i wonder aloud why my father had just painted over whatever it was--dirt? debris? i realize it's egg sacs plastered to the wood.

i back away, scanning. janine and ayla are in another room. i see the spider, a big wolf. i'm trying to keep it in sight and maneuver over to the camera. if i can get a picture, i can look it up to see how to deal with it. then there's another spider, even bigger, gray, across the counter. i am up on the opposite counter trying to get a shot. the wolf is considering me. then it edges over to the gray one; i hope they'll fight and simplify my problem. then ayla strolls into the kitchen right next to the counter. no! ayla, run! she won't respond quickly enough. she'll stand there and ask me what i'm talking about. the wolf leaps! no! no!

--
eggs. mother.
backing away rather than just squishing it.
ayla defenseless from the leaping threat; my child.