dream worlds in formation

dream space

I dreamed I was awake in a place I had often dreamed of.

 

I said:  "This is the place of my dreams."

 

Then, an icy dead hand grabbed my shoulder,

 

revealing my fear.

 

'I do not fear you."  I said.  I lied.

 

"You are only my imagination."

 

She cackles, pushing her scaled hand

 

into my subconscious flesh.

 

This is not how the dream is meant to be;

 

not how I remember.

 

When I wake, as I always do,

 

I am disappointed.

 

Again.

*

*

)

)

 

Water Ballet

*

)

Swimming in the dream, occasional moments of lucidity

Yet, still, it is the dream, dark matter of my mind

sillily spinning.

There again those iconic structures, melting into mist,

into another round on the kaleidoscope to a calliope drone.

I swim, eerily quiet, through gem-encrusted caverns.

There are hieroglyphs, familiar yet unreadable,

etched onto the walls and crustacea.

Limpid oyster eyes, yes there's a crust of sleep dust

someday to fester into a luminescent pearl --

treasures beyond compare, beyond price,

way out beyond the market universe.

Swimming, a water ballet, so intimately aware of

each measured movement

it doesn't matter how the background keeps shifting.

 

*

)

 

 

*

)

 

 

Looking for dream tidings, I find images about having to pack up a lot of junk, to move elsewhere by choice or in response to disaster or inconvenience.  Stuff about crowded living situations or helter-skelter moving about to find I don’t know what.  Nothing distinct.

)

Then, after indeterminate time, I was surprised to find myself dreaming strong images, even if scattered in the way that dreams do.  I was waiting in a lovely waiting room with happy, even serene, people to be handed my new baby.  I believe, though I don’t think it was mentioned, a girl.  She was all little and perfect and sweet.  Everyone was excited, pleased, welcoming.  This went on for awhile as the scene morphed a bit into myself and child with a group of friends/family celebrating.  We went to a lovely European-style restaurant, open to the air, with beautiful artwork including the furnishings and tableware.  It was open, breezy, rich in colors, fabrics, yet not cluttered, enjoyably energizing and relaxed.

*

The waitress came over to us to take us to a table.  She was dressed in a kind of alpine costume, with long blonde curls and a drolly made-up face.  She was all smiles and warm welcome, happy to see us, happy to have us enjoying her restaurant.  I looked at her face as she touched me gently on the shoulder.  I was amazed to realize that this was the woman who had so taunted, tortured and destroyed me in real life.  Yes, it was her, but so changed.  She was happy, warm, friendly, inviting, especially once it became clear that she also recognized me.  She went about introducing me to the other staff, very proudly, as if I were a long lost friend who had happily chanced to refind her, here in this beautiful place that she was proud to show off.  I had initially been quite (though quietly) aghast to see her.  Very shortly, though, I was happy as well, for everyone was being very merry, very loving, without the slighted hint of any edge of enmity or ill-will.

*

*

)

)

 

This dream has been lingering:  I was wondering about in a place I had once lived and returned to. Explaining my presence to someone, I said I had lived here before, but had been living in NY and a lot of places had changed.

.

Then I was back in NY, apparently to take care of unfinished business. I didn’t have enough money to pay for my exorbitantly priced room. The shrewish proprietress gave the room to someone who came in while I was arguing about the price. I was out on the street.

.

I ran into an old acquaintance in a dark parking lot, outside a bar. Apparently we had parted bitterly. I apologized for what had happened and asked that we be able to get along, if not as friends not as enemies. He agreed to try.

.

I was inside the bar, in a largish ladies’ lounge, sitting on a wooden bench. Another woman, friendly, offered to share a cigarette. We smoked and talked amiably. Another woman came along and offered a glass tube, which she put to my lips and blew a white smoke into me, several times. I realized I was enjoying kaleidoscopic visions when I awoke, thinking: aw sh__! Just when it was getting good.

 

*

*

)

)

 

I was dreaming that I was walking along a verdant highway shoulder with my brother and his wife. She was asking about my health issues. I explained to her that I was coming to the realization that I was no longer “sick.” I had gone through a long healing process. Now I was not a sick person healing, but a new person I had not been before. My task now was to learn how to be that person effectively.

*

 

As I was saying this last bit, she let us know that we needed to cross the highway here, to get to a place she wanted us to enjoy in the woods on the other side. She and my brother raced across when she said: “now.” However, I got caught by traffic that came up on me too quickly. I have a recurring dream situation in which I am trying to get across a street or some such and find my feet somehow glued or tarred, unable to move. I remembered that and expected this situation to ensue. However, to my surprise, I found I was able to, lane by lane, cross the highway after waiting for the oncoming traffic in that lane to clear. I woke up before reaching the other side.

*

)

*

)

 

an image from a recent dream. I understand my dream offers no authority: I had apparently been the victim of a violent crime and was arguing with the police detective that it was not right that I be denied a role in finding and dealing with my attacker. I passionately argued for the rights of the victims, supposedly those we are meant to be working for in efforts at criminal justice, to be empowered by being an integral part of that process. Yet I was being treated as a bystander in my own life.

 

*

*

)

)

 

Just a dream, but then,

truth can come from dreams

hidden far beneath common

understandings

compasses and brandings

useful for daily social norms

truths enrobed in symbolic forms

reveal in dreams

 

*

)

*

)

 

dream imagery can be so evocative

without making sense

without kowtowing to the senses

to scientifically observable fact

running without legs or pavement

smiles lingering without cats or mirth

dense, immediate quarrels

never begun nor ended

I roll over crimson seas in a rollicking

ferryboat, bar tab with no way to pay

dreaming, outside responsibility

catching glinting glimpses

open to interpretation

*

)

 

*

)

 

 

kind of vague as to where it started

*

something about visiting friends at this old, complicated house

)

then there was a passage of time, and I'm back, out back, by the backdoor, where a woman I don't know is letting out a dog.  At first I was fearful, but the dog proved friendly, and we romped a bit.  Somehow I was inside the house with the woman, who I assumed was visiting my friend, though my friend did not appear.  There did appear a man, middle-aged arty bohemian, dark facial hair, "hippie" type clothing, flowing and colorful.  I assumed he was also visiting my still absent friend.  There was red wine in clear crystal wine glass.  The man was building some kind of shelf or temporary structure, part of an art project.  There was evidence of paints, canvases, art supplies.  The corner with his stuff was messy and exuberant, like he was.  The woman was sitting in a clear, structured part of the room, glass and metal sharp-angled "modern" furniture.  The wine glass was atop the modern table.  There was a large window, taking up the wall space to my left.  Outside I could see that there was major flooding.  It would be impossible to walk home.  People were swimming to get anywhere.  I asked the woman if I could stay the night because of the flood.  The man was making a lot of noise with his project.  I walked over to watch him.  He started telling a long, apparently meaningful story, but I could only make out occasional words.  I nodded and smiled when he seemed to expect response.

)

I told the woman that I was an old friend of the people who had lived in this house.  I mentioned two separate old friends, people who I have always greatly admired for their courage, independence, difficult struggles through which they achieved self-expression.  She did not seem to know them, though allowed that she was not certain that my older friend was not somewhere deep in the recesses of the house.  I remembered that the younger friend had moved from this house a few years back; that I had been away since then and had just recently returned.  I did not know if these people in the house were visitors or new residents.

*

The woman told me that I could not stay.  I said I understood, that I would leave as soon as I finished the wine in my glass, which was prominently placed on the table.  Outside it was becoming dusk.  The woman said I must leave immediately before it got too dark to find my way.  I quickly swallowed the last gulp of wine and left.

*

Once outside, it was almost dark.  It had become quite cold, and the flood water had frozen.  Now the ground was covered in steep ice and snow.  It was difficult to walk though the slippery jagged icy covering on the streets and sidewalks.  I was not sure where I was, though I thought that I could keep going and eventually find my way home.  It seemed to be getting darker and colder.  There was hardly anyone else on the streets; no one nearby.  It was an upper middle-class residential neighborhood with big, sometimes strikingly good looking homes.  Snow covered the yards and loomed above me.  Suddenly I could see the beginning of an avalanche.  The snow was still far above me, but I could see that soon it would overcome me.  I did not want to suffocate in the snow.  I got moving, as quickly as I could over the icy pavement, as the snow kept moving toward me.

)

I found myself at the edge of a large bowl-shaped ground, a vast courtyard.  It was quite wintry through the countryside, but the ground was fairly bare.  The courtyard was semi-circled by a huge, impressive building.  Something like a castle, but also like I imagine a Soviet governmental building, strong red bricks and ornate architectural flourishes.  There were two uniformed guards, something like old Bolshevik army uniforms, red with black and gold trimming.  They were quite far from me, but I had a flash thought that they might hurt me.  The thought passed, and I continued moving down a vast wall of snow, like a mountain trail.  I could see the open-ended majesty of the courtyard in the twinkling night and it thrilled me.

*

I awoke with that image still before my inner eye.

 

*

)

*

)

 

 

 

Jump!  Jittery.  Nauseous claustrophobia . . .

l e t t i n g  g o  s  l  o  o  o  w

Whoosh in a leap faster than my breath can catch me

moving dizzily, half-blinded, out of focus

moving along a tree-shadowed path.

Enchanted forest?

smoke curling upward

gingerbread cottage in the woods

may I rest here, recoup my losses?

Savory soup simmers over the hearth fire.

Shadows fall over the corners

yet the center of the room

is surprisingly clean and polished.

I sit in mantra embraced

by soft silky wings.

Outside winter is falling.

When I awaken from my trance

planting season will begin.

*

The wild rains of spring

have caught me napping.

They catch me up in torrents

swinging me along

a cradle in the sea.

I am dreaming mazes

wondrous pageantry

woven into ivy walls.

The sea surrounds me.

I acquiesce to secret ceremony

believing the earth to be my home.

 

*

*

)

)

 

 

The Ontology of Dreams

*

)

 

Centering out from the widening spiral,

phantom bits of fear and memory

Feeling my way into new rooms, new adventures, ways of being

It was important to lock the door to the noisy hallway,

feeling my way.

Surreal images, photographs in time, scenarios played out of sequence

A mother image leaves for a trip of no return

Another image, unknotting blue ribbon in strong good humor,

willing to perform

outward from my center.

I tell you this, tell you my changing seas and travails

it is important, opening the door, welcoming opportunities.

Tell me, tell me, tell the tale of my dream.

Spiraling out like galaxies,

photographs drifting into uneasy orbit.

Antennae licking the flashpoint, releasing images, centering

eyes opening into focus.

*

)

*

)

 

Creature, being, created from singular experience cocooned in dreaming.

Meditating, sitting, silent, still, watching metaphoric art film of revealed

truth waft like oracular smoke over beauty of this deep-blue pond contained

in floating ice offset by fog-faded mountain awareness.

Stories unencumbered by beginnings, by logical progression, by

boundaries, yet pure and strong as sacred text.

That meat-suit we use for interface, to find and absorb sustenance,

input that makes us dependent on a scientifically defined world,

magically transcended, hours transformed outside of measurement,

of time.

Even those horrific, catastrophic images that angrily cast you back

into a waking sweat and terror, even they are breakthrough respite,

catharsis to contain, secure, untenable memories, fears.

Immerse with your story’s most salient themes.

*

)

 

*

)

 

Agitated, observing, moving fluidly in the multi-tiered library.

So much to take in, be drawn into, imaginary conversations with

bright-labeled books.  The library like a horror movie medieval tower,

fearsome.  Lightning storm, steep stone climb from a college holiday

fair far below.

Immersed in sharp colors, sensual, deeply felt geometries.  Circus

fools, acrobat costumes, hidden rivers along highways thicketed in

mystically perfumed foliage.  Scenes never seen in waking life, yet

perennially home, in dreamtime,

Puissant, what drugs want to promise.  Free theater customed

to a singular crowd.  Instant, hologrammatic slice of eternity.

Perhaps a gift, brief respite from agonized responsibilities.

Respite from cold, pain, everyday injuries of innumerable mites

infected with pestilence, endless war.

In the innocence of dreamtime, what have you seen?

*

)

*

)

 

Those dreams, those dreams, to live only there

where it all makes nonsense that feels so inevitable.

Dream places connected in hyper-clear intensity

-- hard hills of snow become Summer fountain festivals

on opium fields, sickly sweet and sticky bun bewitching,

that cloying ecstasy you never want to leave.

Those snow-robed mountains, forests, royal Guard,

calling so softly, so forcefully, Sirening in, holding

for exhibition.

Who we are in dreams, unobserved for critique,

pictures imbued with emotional sensation speaking

directly to our most private desires.

To live in dreamtime, free of censoring reality,

what would that mean?

*

)

*

)

 

That dream again

running, running

but your feet are stuck, enmeshed in pavement

though all of your intent runs in terror.

Demon warriors form themselves in the grey cloud that surrounds you, become denser, full 3-D attack.

You find yourself at war with your pillow, trapped in twisted sheets.

Another damned day to get through looms beyond the dream-storm tossed bed.

*

And you?  Tell me your dreams.

 

*

)

*

)

Here, in this still place,

prior to awakening,

which dream takes hold?

Dream whatever dream you see.

Reveal your potent imagery.

Release your awesome wings

— it’s okay; it’s just a dream …

 

 

*

)

*

)