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Tag Archives: dream

variations on a dream

December 11, 2025
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whew. woke up just in time. the evil overlords/had me. my cover was blown, my whereabouts known,/and this minute the bald guy with the cigarette holder,/an obvious admirer of the late dr. hunter s. thompson,/had a gun on me…

just woke up. lots of colors./we were playing hopscotch near piccadilly circus/when the ghost of shakespeare,/head shaven, smoking a virginia slim on a long ivory holder,/was showing me the cap gun i had owned as a child./he handed it to me,/and I removed the roll of caps, put the roll/on the sidewalk, and slammed/it with a hammer. at that exact moment…

wow, that was a doozy. i was disguising myself. shaved head, rouged cheeks, fishnet stockings on a garter belt./the only instructions from hq were “dress in drag and carry your walther ppk between the peaks of your falsies, in plain sight.”//i wonder, not for the first time, if i am being set up.

ugh. thank gog I woke up. damn, i need a cigarette. –hey, wait, i don’t smoke. maybe i’m not awake yet…

dream is but a life

May 15, 2025
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to the spirit of stephen crane

in the dream a younger, troubled-days

robert downey jr

was auditioning for director

paul verhoeven

and the scene was going well

but then downey jr stopped,

overwhelmed,

and wept blood onto his bare chest.

verhoeven gently strolled over

and sat beside him,

and with a razor-sharp index fingernail

incised a design of a thorned heart

over downey jr’s real heart

with downey jr’s blood.

the tear-blood mixed

with the incision-blood.

verhoeven delicately put his hand

on downey jr’s shoulder

and downey jr looked up at verhoeven

with his wet, red-streaked face.

they were both weeping.

verhoeven so softly said,

“get your immaculate heart restored,

and we’ll talk.”

****

Afterword: This afternoon I came home from work exhausted, probably more due to sleep-deprivation the night before than from the rigors of work. I woke feeling refreshed and, still in bed, started to browse the Internet with my phone–but soon found the phone falling out of my hands as I nodded off. “Well, let’s take another nap.” In my second nap I had a dream substantially like the poem I have just written. I wrote a draft and was struck by the dream’s kinship to “In the Desert” by Stephen Crane. I then slightly rewrote the poem to make the cadence and language more Cranelike, more starkly descriptive; and I dedicated the poem to the spirit of Stephen Crane, one of my literary heroes.

nocturnal flashmob

March 5, 2025
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this old man once got by/on an average of four hours of sleep per night/but now it is as if he is repaying an insomnia loan/and longer sleeps make for more vivid dreams

two nights ago he and his brothers were on a bus

(one brother in real life had passed on six years ago)

the bus dropped them off at a hotel near a ski resort in colorado/at which they intended to ski/and the deceased brother said/”i’m gonna look around”/and left the lobby/and the other brother was elsewhere as well

the clerk lady had a file on the dreamer/including the laminate from his high school i.d. card/with a faint image of his babyish younger self/and the clerk grinned and said “that’ll be a flat five dollars”/and the dreamer drew a crumpled fiver from his jeans/and pressed it between his hand and the lobby desk/and rubbed until it was as flat as he could get it

the little bell on the front door jingled/and a woman he did not recognize walked in/with a classmate and crony from long ago/and now the dreamer recognized the woman

she’d had some work done/smooth forehead/collagenned and dermabraded face/and buttressed breasts/but forty years ago she’d played him and dumped him/did the same to the classmate too/and now classmate and old flame/were making another go of it

she was flirty with the dreamer but he would have none of it/strode out the door and onto the brittle ice-encrusted snow/leaving stomp-prints in his wake

somehow he was on the roof/finding it vital to crawl lest he slide and fall/down and off the steep-pitched edge

a skier landed near him from above/grinned and “hiya”ed and pivoted/and launched herself off/and the dreamer was sure he knew her/but couldn’t give her a name

somehow he was on the ski lift/and a peruvian young woman was chatting him up/explaining that she loved to ski year round/and half a year hence she’d be back in peru/and here came the dismount point/and she said “chase me”/heading for a black-diamond trail

“no way” thought the dreamer/and slid toward a blue trail/on a burton board he was using for the first time/but it was just like a skateboard/and he deftly threaded through dozens of hesitant newbies/picking up speed/getting cocky/but here came an unavoidable TREE*#*#*

the dreamer gasped awake

uninjured/intensely relieved

and hobbled to the blindingly-lit bathroom/to complete his relief

flee fly flow fun

November 16, 2024
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she flexed her wings and flew into the sky/and orbited a planet she had known/before she donned her latest flesh. in high/aphelion our sun but dimly shone

but she supplied the radiance the brightness/and dove into the atmosphere a nymph/of firefly glow of first-time-kiss delightness/swift unlymphatic for she had no lymph

from core to ring she sped and danced en pointe/and left a ringdust phosphorescent wake/a kindred soul beheld in lust and want/but she was gone a differed need to slake

through solar wind she fled then bed resumed/through sun’s core in her dream cleansed unconsumed

INKtober 2023, day 1: Dream

October 1, 2023
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Wow, INKtober has arrived, and I didn’t realize till a couple hours ago. The prompt is Dream. I did this without forethought and with no photo sourcing, just mind’s-eye stuff.

Speaking of eyes, I have new lens implants in mine following cataract surgery. My eyes are still healing, but my astigmatism is gone, and with the help of reading glasses I am getting a much clearer view. I am grateful for the medical advances that gave my vision new life.

Here are the words to the quickie double acrostic:

Drama Dream

Damn the slumbrous night–so hard
Ravaged memory of char
Ashen Carnage is the theme
Must we one again do harm? Da
Age and Wisdom lend no charm

yet another feather/boy and cat and dream

November 9, 2016
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My friend Suz Dykes took a break from Facebook because of the political nastiness–then came back today of all days. I promised her some light and/or fluffy and/or inspirational stuff. Hope you like this, Suz!

2016-11-09 16.32.07.jpg

boy and cat and dream

the boy has a cat on his shoulder

the cat has a dream in her head

the dream is of warmth to enfold her:

a boulder in sun as her bed.

the dream snaps as shut as a locket

the cat feels the boy stroke her fur

the boy has a treat in his pocket:

unsocketed catnip–she’ll purr.