can't remember what i dreamed, but there were tattoos

i have things
things i want to ask you
things i want to know
but
i don't seem to be able

such a long and involved dream

and i only remember
riding
in a train or bus, not sure
first looking at
then pointing out to a boy
the glimmering landmark
a giant pyramid of tiny tiny lights
towering
yet ethereal
in the dusk sky

carousel

i dreamed of looking
for a giant carousel by the sea
it was supposed to be amazing
one end angled into the sea
jutting down
dangerous, seemingly
to rival a rollercoaster
but
i couldn't find it
where it was supposed to be
a bunch of ugly stuff
but then
halfway hidden
a round art gallery
like a fairy grotto
and there was more

but
i still wonder
if you could have this be
anything
any way
any how
is this the way you'd have it
or
do you dream about something different
sometimes
sometimes i think
maybe you say different
but
then
i think maybe
maybe i just want you to have said that

kissing you

i want to learn to kiss with you
to sit in the back of a darkened theater
and steal my hand upon your knee
to go to a drive-in, maybe
to smoke dope
to see the marching munchies across the screen a million miles tall
to get popcorn
and soda
candy
if you like
and then
back in the car
to kiss you
i can't remember what it's like
to kiss like that

and what i really want, right now
is that

today had a rather surreal quality to it

i literally do not remember last year
it's one long blackout drunken escapade
there was death
and
mayhem

but i don't remember it

the year before
there was death
and
mayhem

but i do remember that

but
it's weird
i don't feel like the same person, somehow

today i felt very detached from my own ...
what am i trying to say here
not from my life
but from my job
my circumstances
it was like somebody just dropped me into a body
like i was drivin it around
and it didn't really work all that well
my back got sore--  so so fast

yet i was able to be triumphant
in a petty little way
suck it megan
i whispered to myself
as i sold the last 19 bottles of the 2 cases of the prisoner
that my regional overloard didn't really want me to buy

but it doesn't really help me
and my
my mother is starting not to bother me so much

we had dinner at this place she likes
and
i like it too

and
i worried about you today
maybe, sometimes, i think you won't know what i mean
you'll mistake my meaning
i paint you this delicate beautiful wraith/waif, sometimes
i might puncture your membrane
with my callous tongue

is that a hold-over from my dad, a long standing belief about men
something psychological
or something you made me feel
when first i cried to you from my balcony window
high, chain-smoking, and watching dragonflies in the rain

maybe it's the beautiful tragedy of your poetic soul
fancy words for the thing that pulled me
from the start

maybe i've reified it in a maternal sort of way

or maybe
i just heart you

it doesn't have to make sense
it just is
and
i
had
forgotten
the mayhem

and
i'm not sure what that means

fiesta

I dreamed I was getting ready
for
it originally was an art show
but
gradually
it became a party
rather than trying to sell things
I was going to celebrate
it started with decoration
then flowers
white tulips
white roses
more exotic white flowers
then
dachshund riesling
and some other phallic referent wine
that was red
and beer

a very small boy
who was related
and had been ignoring me
squeeled and threw himself against my legs
which gave me pleasure beyond measure
my little boy

I had a pet bird
I think it was a parrot

anyway
looking back
it seemed like
pretty wedding-y

but
I want
that child

readings

this evening

now

what does he want from me

i know you're unlikely to be impressed by this

but
my sales were #10 in the company yesterday
for my dept.
i mean
not for the store as a whole

so i went back to work yesterday, but i put myself on the dl

so
got the manager's ok to have help
found the most linebacker-y guy i could get
i figure he probably is my weight class
but he's like six foot somethin
i'm all tellin him
what to put on the dolly
where to take it
where to take it off the dolly
this was radically unpleasant for me
[not that he was unpleasant about it
just
i don't like that dynamic
you work, i "supervise"]

i kid you not
after 45 minutes
he's like:
that's it, right
and i'm all like:
no, you got someplace to be?

anyway
he escaped as soon as he could
and then
i just had to help people buy things
i figure by Monday i oughta be off the dl
and there's not much moving things around i'd be able to do today
i might be tempted to do a little
lifting
gotta be strong
and not

you are kind of adorable

i hurt my back

i left work early
i couldn't stand or sit
or walk or move
without discomfort
and
what i really couldn't do
was
bend
or lift things
just couldn't

i've spent all day
soaking in epsom salts
and laying on heating pad
rubbing bengay

stretching

and

i'm worried

not that i'm permanently damaged
i'm sure i'm not

but
i've got another nine days of this

and
i'm not sure i can


that has distracted me
and
i did want to try to tell you about that dream
the balloons, in space
it was cool
and
i performed the heart surgery
it was
sort of
shamanistic

i love you
and i'm sorry that i haven't had much
the last couple days
i wanted to
i'm thinking of you

oh wow
hurt back and all
i just took that dirty
the particular angle i'd like you to rub my lower back
it's been drifting back to renaming everything in the garden
animate, sensual
for a while now

do you like that more
sometimes if you do i think that's good
sometimes i'm not sure about that
i wish

what i wish
is that i knew
something that i don't know currently, about you

but i don't mean
general stuff
doesn't need to be sexy

i wish that
and that i was as tough as i think i am

heart surgery and releasing balloons into space

superbad headache all day

going to bed now
i love you
angel

something to do with religion

at these festivals
community gatherings
he had this ascension ceremony
which seemed to be about him
but people
who followed him
were sometimes walking around in a daze
not sure what was going on
having been relieved of most of their debt

i can remember 3 dreams

the first I was a kid, I think
it was this house
and my room was tiny and shaped
like a pup tent
I was not pleased
too small
no place to hang my clothes
but the view and property were beautiful
there was a train coming by
in the near distance

in the second
it was like a Manhattan project
or what's the other one
Los Alamos?
but
this was quantum
and
not weapon-y
the guys working it
they had really strange senses of humor
they would make these tubes
for each other to get in
kinda like doggie doors
and
as a joke
they kept changing the opening
to be too small
and lots of poop humor

in the third
I frothed milk
seemingly endlessly
making café mochas
enormous
collander sized mochas
but I seemed pretty happy about it
I think I want chocolate
and I knew mine were the best

i'm going to bed now

i love you

parade building

i went up the hill to speak to the alien
about my son's birth right
but it turned out
the big spaceship on top of the hill
was a bunch of guys
in a house that looked like a flying saucer
one was my son's father
and we had had some sort of really elaborate
game (maybe) that we had made together
anyway
i started talking to the other guys
and they were all really nice
i was telling them
it seemed like i had had two cars disappear
but possibly i had just dreamed, really vividly
of having the cars
because i didn't seem to have any
actual information about the cars

anyway
when you finally showed up
we started putting bits and pieces together
and we ended up with a parade of
lessons for children
using goofy cultural references
so it was kinda fun for watching parents too
i went back home
and tried to record another one
but my equipment didn't work so well
and when i tried to play it for you
it wouldn't play
and there was just a big puff of orange dust
you were nice about it
but i think
it was somehow also supposed to explain
how i still wanted you around
how great we always worked together
how, now i was reminded about it, i
totally missed you

i don't know if you ever got that message
or really if you missed me too
and
my son didn't seem to be anywhere
in the dream at all
so
i was a little confused about that

i left work early because i'm sick

i went to bed about 3 hours ago
woke up because i have to pee
drank tea before bed
but
i had crazy dreams
baseball
baseball players
going to games
i can't remember, but insider stuff

but then also
signing people up for gaming systems
using email
but then too
an elaborate system of pictures
representing
favorite holiday moments, i think
turkey, fireplaces, whatnot
they were telling me a story
and i was representing it with
a photo montage i was entering
into the computer, right then
it was weird

back to sleep

i hope i didn't freak you out

maybe the religion thing
didn't make sense
it wasn't meant to be at all bad

i love you
nickels

this is not done, not right, yet but i literally can't keep my eyes open

my inner landscape has a broad big sky

desert

i don't meet you in the forest
in the circle of trees
my mind just doesn't go there

i meet you by the campfire
the campfire in the desert
but the desert is so dry
i don't know if i can
stand the heat
of the
eye
i
see
the twister
arc across
turn
press into the landscape again, and again


tundra, with the trickster ravens, stealing the light of heaven

all night

i worked on this wine deal
there was so much involved
i was trying to help some people
get their family back together
and
i was trying to make some money
but
i wasn't sure what i was doing was legal
so
when i lost my cell
and i kept getting these messages:

they say they found your phone
go to unit 22

they say they found your phone
we know you're busy right now
but we suggest meeting with us
unit 22

i decided
i had to hurry and finish
before these guys find me

it wasn't a restful sleep

i haven't been able to say anything today

i needed to do laundry
i didn't do it
i took a bath

i dreamed last night that my breasts
like tightened, or something
pulling into my chest
probably
because my muscles were sore from lifting
i moved boxes
from 7:30 to 2:30 almost constantly

my protocol is working
two aleves and an ibuprofen with an emergen-c
before work
i don't like it for my liver
but it is really helping with the inflammation

i think i use critical mass on the epsom salts



i'm 50 pages from the end in that book
and
ultimately
i don't think it can be
st this point
quite what i wanted
i mean
i guess i must have changed what i wanted a novel to be, slightly
well, not changed so much as discovered
that it was not complete so much as stated
somehow

because i am learning, i guess, about how being human is for him
[mostly we'll say]
but there's something
some bigger picture
that despite all his talk of singularities
i'm just not getting

and that is what i'm trying to figure out
if i'm writing something
for you
about you
because of you
whatever
that's the thing i'm missing

i don't think i mean like a moral
i almost mean a metaphor

i keep playing with the idea of landscape
i clearly want the questing and the desert and the landscape
the cross country and the cross roads
i have worked the images and the symbols
until they are
just are
us

but
i need to be saying something with the story
the bits of the story were all pieces
of me telling you things
and me telling me things
and maybe you telling me things
but that isn't the story
i thought it was

but
i don't think it is

i thought
the way to write it
is some sort of uncertainty magical realism
unreliable narrator
i like films like that

but this isn't film

and take american god's for example
it's a good book
i enjoy it
but
the ending
doesn't seem to live up to the rest of the book

no
i think i have to know where i'm going
i, as it turns out, have
structure after all

that little bit about the ravens
i have had in the book
in pretty much exactly that way
for years
often
i picture that as
the end

so then
i must have the story, right
but, no

that story
i could write that story
and i could give it a beautiful little human growth theme

no
no i couldn't
nor do i think the thing to write you is the image of our fantasy life

i could, i might write you bits of that
they become part of the images the symbols
but they aren't the story itself


so what is it you read the story for
what is it about me that makes me hard to turn away from
what is it about yourself that you learn by listening to me
and what do i learn about myself from my inability to turn away from you
and what makes this so much more real
than the stuff that i am medicating my way through

i was thinking the other day:
i used to think that i should start a religion
and, as i watch myself
i think that was not as all bad advice
[though it was meant to be somewhat tongue in cheek]
i think that i have a natural tendency to look for meaning
and i think, now that i really understand the cyclical nature of religion
the growth that is possible by revisiting psychological states
year after year

i think that that, somehow, is the story

does that
make sense

cause i'm almost thinking i'm on to something

i had crazy vivid dreams

compassionate vampires
mutant powers
monastic order fighters
and the girl with the nickel tattoo

woven in
amongst all that
was me following you
and
some catch phrase about nickel
that said something profound about love
i wish i could remember everything
it was kinda intense

hope you are good
happy and healthy
i love you

i'm having a stressful work holiday season

if anything sounds weird
it just probably isn't coherent
I love you
and
I was pretty happy yesterday
but
today, less so

those last two were from a while ago

just now published them

they aren't apropos of anything, now
i guess when you publish it for the first time
it moves it to where you are at that moment

and more

the thing about bukowski's misogyny is
that it's so beautifly shows the break
that continued to break itself
and
the funny thing is
i saw enough pieces
footage of him with his wife
i think she kinda loved it out of him
i think i saw a couple pieces snap off
and
in the end
he was able to express the male-ness better
and
i mean, the women was just
true
on some level at least
i think it felt true
so if it's misogynistic, does it matter

we were building a restaurant

one piece at a time
with salvage
and whatnot
and what was developing
was quite a cantina

the waitresses were all done up
like catrinas
and then there was a more elaborately costumed catrina
playing piano

you had picked out the waitresses uniforms
lavendar and natural

three baths and 241 pages later

i have thoughts about what i want in a novel
in a way this is not new
i sort of knew this
but
a novel
for me
needs to tell me something about the person who wrote it
not anything about them, as such
but, rather, about how being a human is for them
like the planetarium of their synapses

really
i'm not talking about realism

murakami does this really well for me in wind up bird
or kafka on the beach
even though, really, what happens in those books
how much of that is real
none of it
all of it
who cares

it's all real

so, anyway
i was reading, i read something that made me stop
it was maybe trite, hackneyed
maybe something put in to explain away character development
maybe this wasn't him at all, but research
but
that isn't why i stopped
i stopped because it made me think of myself
like a verfremdungseffekt
suddenly i wanted to ask you what you thought

perhaps i have been going about our relationship all wrong
but no
i think i know what you get from me
no
but maybe i'm wrong

to the point where
no matter if it's trite and hackneyed
effective has got to count
to engage the reader directly
to relate the context of the work to their own lives
surely this was working for me, anyway

so here's the jist of it
[i'd like to run to you wrapped in a robe of some kind
ahhh but what to draw upon the robe]

men do not really want from women what they think they do
they want neither sex nor companionship
what they want
mystery
like the mystery
not
like a mystery

so
hmmmm
it seems to me
that what you want from me
is more like the unbundling of the mystery

although
that's a rather techno meta phor

which is why i don't describe the robe

maybe it's a mental dance of the seven veils

i love you

the last couple nights
it felt like
you were in bed with me
if you are doing something, in particular
I like it