long dream

Dreamt I was back in Bloomington, had gone to the grocery late at night, and decided to push the cart home with my things in it, as there were too many to carry. This turned out to be a terrible idea, as there were no sidewalks for much of the way, and the road became incredibly narrow, to the point where I was almost run over anytime a car passed. Several times I had to leap over a car to keep from dying, and none of the drivers seemed to even notice me, let alone slow down.  I moved along the curb so slowly that it was morning and I still wasn't home, and late for school.

The way home kept getting longer. Now it passed through farmland, and I pushed the cart along through the dirt. After a while, I was so tired that I forgot my things in the cart, and they were struck by a passing car, and scattered all along the side of the road. As I went to pick them up, I noticed that some of them were not mine at all. There was a small handgun that I certainly hadn't bought at any grocery store. Someone had stopped on their way by, and said someone else had claimed the things were his.

I abandoned my groceries to get a ride home from my mom, who had happened to stop by. The drive involved crossing an old wooden bridge that ran along a mountainside. She drove very fast along it, not slowing down, but part of the bridge was missing, as it unexpectedly curved to the left. We sailed right over the edge and into the bridge's wooden supports and rocks below. I shut my eyes, sure I was about to be torn to shreds when we hit.

But somehow, the car was fine, and we plunged into the river rapids leading down the mountain. The river carried us frighteningly fast, the land blurring, so that in seconds we were nowhere we recognized. In reality, we could have circumnavigated the globe in hours, moving that fast. It quickly became clear that there was nothing for it but to wait and see where the river took us. Eventually, it slowed down.

We floated lazily along the side of a road, and I noticed two identical cars parked there with their hoods open. And inside each was a steering wheel, just sitting there as if it were meant to be picked up and plugged into the car. I remarked on the coincidence of finding two identical vehicles just waiting there, as if someone wanted us to use them. But the idea seemed ridiculous, as who could have foreseen our crash in the river? Getting to the cars would have involved leaping into them as we passed by, so I decided not to take the risk, in case they were not meant for us at all.

A thousand different things happened next, and its impossible to remember any of them. I remember that we were completely lost, and sometime later, wound up in a hotel for the night on the way home. I walked into my room, and there were the legs of a mannequin just standing in the corner. Just as I was thinking how odd that was, they attacked me, running up and wrapping around my neck, choking me. I was able to call for help, and my mom pried them off me, and I kicked them across the room. The armless top half of the body came to life, but after I punched it a few times, it lay still.

We both wondered at how odd everything had gotten, starting with those two cars by the roadside, and I looked up at the ceiling and wondered how I could explain these things, and I realized there was only one possible explanation, which I had probably known, but not acknowledged before that moment, and that was that I was dreaming. And as soon as I said that, I woke up.

dream

A boy who lived in a large two-story apartment, where all of the doors connected to every room at once, so that he could never be sure which room he was walking into until he opened it. The middle two fingers on his left hand were fused together, his nails were too thick, and the whole hand was swollen and pinkish, like a pig's foot; but no one else ever seemed to notice it. Sometimes it would begin to grow thousands of silky, white hairs on it, and he would have to rush down to a small bathroom in the basement to shave them off. This involved passing through the cellar, and then a dusty unlit crawl space which was home to a family of ghosts. They made typical ghost noises at him, but still managed to be frightening.
Also, there was a lesbian nymphomaniac, but that's all I remember about her.

Today

amphet a mean sunrise

killing stroke on the fairy land
burn world of candy cane copses
and caramel latrines

of the heated chase
and the madman's pace
doth I dream

and shatter awake with feet made of steam

to hit the ground running this vortecal race
to singular finish with cosmic embrace
folded down fabric streams
to spin to the end as miasmic waste

bright! bright is the wound
where we meet again!
the firmament torn through
the God-plastic worn
where I took your hand
and whispered "till then"

and so I dreamt you this night
but now there are heavens to rend!