(In Poetic Prose)
In the
dream, the dreamer is reconstructing, trying to create nighttime life,
nocturnal life; Mr. D., the Pedant, is standing by a river, the past and
present and future, watching it drift by, standing by a river watching and the
things are not clear of thought, —nighttime life, in the dream is being
reconstructed in the language of the nighttime life, —the pedant who is the
dreamier, the observer and observations, is the narrator, narrating the running
commentary… it is in actuality, the night of the soul!
Dreams buried in a coffin—dreams of the
dead, everybody came to the funeral, even the postman. His wife, Mr. D’s ex-wife,
before his death tried to extort him to write a letter— His son-in-law tried to
replace him by a fire, when Mr. D., rose
to prominence! And here he lays in a sea of dreams. His great-grandfather fell to his death,
fixing his rooftop, in 1874. His wife took his body gave it to the crows, his
sons found it before it vanished, and put it back where it belonged, poured
whisky over it, to preserve it, and brought him to his casket, singing: “Twenty-four black birds
baked in a pie…! And then went to lunch,
at Burger King.
This is the dream of the dead, this was
all to be put into a letter, never to be read. What is really being said is the
dead, or near dead, in REM sleep, when the imp sits on top of your chest, the
mind and the soul and the body can no longer reconstruct according to nocturnal
life, so this is being watched closely by the dreamer… He is now in an attic bedroom he is twelve
years old, writing a poem; now in a pub below…Nasty drunks all around listening
to the radio. His grandfather is a tailor, and he’s a soldier in WWI: now Mr.
D., is twenty-three, he has just left Vietnam … all his sons come day-dreaming,
reading a book called “The Backbone” it’s about a cat and a mouse, and about a
daughter and a son-in-law: the sons are formed liked a banana with two heads,
the son-in-law, a banana with no skin.
His daughter, an egg with a crimson yoke. He is a man around town— some
call him the Clown. Now his sons are Cain and Abel, and his daughter Lilith,
and his son-in-law, an arson.
In his coffin, in his dream he is
reconstructing his nocturnal life, the imp has left, no nightmares in sight, to
distort his nighttime night. It is all of course imitation of three single
nights in one dying life. Everything is a fragmented state, — the Pedant is not
even certain of his identity, there in his dear deep sleep, we are dealing with
the sleeping mind, or sleepless mind in trance, in what might be considered
mental metamorphosis, however one wishes to see it. It is a death in progress,
he has become an American officer, no longer a staff Sergeant! Inside his dream, he is day-dreaming, he has
been many things, and now he is in a bar smoking and drinking, after
thirty-years of sobriety (that part of the dream belongs to the imp) — hence,
he is still a work in progress. Upstairs
with his wife, still asleep, his children are nowhere to be found—; we see here
confusion, looking for peace of mind, while spying inside his dream, like a
yellow cat purring. What is he thinking? He starts to wake, falls back to
sleep. He’s floating down a river on a
raft, he jumps off but he can’t seem to die, even though he’s dying—the letter,
he is supposed to write that letter— “…is it a will?” He asks! His children are
waiting outside for him to die!
He changes shapes inside his dreams as a
woman changes shoes or purses, in a hurry. Now he’s a young soldier in Sidney,
in Vietnam, in Germany. Now he’s speaking through his son, with his voice, as
if he is a spiritual medium: “Too late boys! The games over!” They are hoping he will come back to life
from the dead, they haven’t settled accounts, but he has. His wife says: “You
were dreaming!”
It is morning, sunrise. His wife tries to
wake him. A sleeping husband, who has been sleeping for three days, dying along
the way. He hears her, she is part of an echo that is running the length of a
river— And now they are both at the end of the river, standing together on the
edge of an ocean, waiting for a new sunrise, a voice says, “You didn’t make a
very good inventory, but it will have to do!”
No: 4689/ 1-26-2015
