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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.

Ma’am, I Exist

December 23, 2019
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Here’s a Stephen Crane poem in its entirety, courtesy of the Poetry Foundation:

 

A Man Said to the Universe

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
****
Three things strike me, fifty years after I first read, and was enamored with, this poem. Third, the Universe is conversing with the man as if the man were NOT part of Herself. Perhaps the man feels lonely and he has codified his loneliness, and sense of rejection, into this imagined conversation.
Second, She has a voice. How does She speak? Does She implant thoughts in the man’s head, does She make air vibrate, or did She employ corporeal form à la Dr. Strange’s odd compadre Eternity, who resides in the universe of Marvel Comics? Or is the man imagining it all?
But first and foremost, the man addresses the Universe as “Sir.” I think he is wrong to do so. The Universe is forever gestating, creating phenomena without end. And all of Her creations are still in Her womb, for She IS the womb.
So, playfully-or-not, I reboot Crane’s notion, thus:
Gary Said to the Universe
Gary said to the Universe,
“Ma’am, I exist!”
Here is some proof:
20191223_064417
I finished that just this morning. And here are some vessels, Ma’am, made from your very own clay:
20191217_182750
Ma’am, I just want to say I’m grateful to be here.
And ask you: Did God make you?”
“Yes, we are,” replied the Universe.
“As to your question,
We can but reply
‘Here we are.'”
“I don’t understand,” I answered.
“You cannot understand,” She replied.
End of reboot, except to say
I’m neither believer nor atheist,
And this is Exhibit A.

The Cigarette Butt on the Sidewalk

April 11, 2016
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image

to the memory of Stephen Crane

I saw a cigarette butt on the sidewalk.

It noticed the attention I paid it, and it spoke to me.

“In the far future,” said the butt, “No anthropologist, however brilliant, would be able to deduce the misery, desperation and willful neglect that I alone imply.”

I told the butt that that was no doubt true, but that not all of us smoke.

“It does not matter,” the butt replied. “I also imply, lying alone and discarded on the sidewalk, that there will be no far future, and no anthropologists.”