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All night I stumble through the fields of light, And chase in dreams the starry rays divine That shine through soft folds of the robe of night, Hung like a curtain round a sacred shrine. When daylight dawns I leave the meadows sweet And come back to the dark house built of clay, Over the threshold pass with lagging feet, Open the shutters and let in the day. The gray lit day heavy with griefs and cares, And many a dull desire and foolish whim, Leans o’er my shoulder as I spread my wares On dusty counters and at windows dim. She gazes at me with her sunken eyes, That never yet have looked on moonlit flowers, And amid glaring deeds and noisy cries Counts out her golden tale of lagging hours. Over the shrine of life no curtain falls, All men may enter at the open gate, The very rats find refuge in her walls— Her tedious prison walls of love and hate. Yet when the twilight vails that dim abode I bar the door and make the shutters fast, And hurry down the shadowy western road, To seek in dreams my starlit home and vast.

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives. I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats, And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain, Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats, And mocked by hopeless longing to regain Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats, And going to the office in the train.

I can enter the morning with traces of an eternal dream: to live on a planet of women. we sing in the fertile forest, caress on lavender hills, bathe beneath cascades of clear waters. and just like that, nude and wet, we mount each other’s bodies. our desire is a whale that searches for calm in the depth of the sea. I smell sex in my hair when I awaken. the dream perfumes all of my days. I go to the post office and look for stamps with etchings of flowers and fruits so that I can send letters to the women who loved me in my sleep. we are in a world that is not ours. what do we do with the dreams that touch our consciousness in the nude each night? our planet of women is nothing more than a dream. who knows how many of us bathe in the woods or which ones of us have wings that let us fly with our flesh? it’s not for anyone to know. fortunately, we always dream paradise, we make it ours. there, we find each other and live in our collective memory. and so, I smell sex in my hair when I awaken.

All night an accelerating geometry of eyes—hundreds shaped like birds or boats or beetles, simplified to dots or crosses or a pair of 2s or mis- matched diamonds, perfect zeros, scoops of moon placed sidewise or lengthwise on a face, slipping out of orbit on a cheek, hung under an ear, planted mid-forehead, paper-thin planes of them, each one alive and staring from the dislocated faces of wives, lovers, mothers, serene and lopsided, splintered, wrenching, ravaged, a proliferating gallery of women, terraced in my head as I sleep, and my own curious eye: steering toward what it perceives, capturing exact duplicates of each stylized eye I run by, as I race to comprehend what I'm taking in, what expression I'd see if I raised the mirror to find my own eye, distorted and floating above an iron cheek.

The silence that was neither Spanish nor English was my prayer. —Luis Alberto Urrea 1. Last night I dreamt I was Pancho Villa— ragged, bandoliered, reckless. I dreamt my poetry at the end of a pistol, felt it kick nearly out of my hand. But this morning I awoke again white and assimilated into these cobwebs of my half-self. When did I forget my mother? Sometimes Spanish syllables creak like wobbly shopping cart wheels, I have to lean against accent, fill myself with verbs:necesitar, hablar, poder. 2. Half,medio, milkweed, Carlos Gringo, Carlos Murphy. Part mexicano, part Kentucky hillbilly, I’ve angloed my way through this life— hablando español de conveniencia, nunca pensando en la bendición.

Despite the geologists’ knowledge and craft, mocking magnets, graphs, and maps— in a split second the dream piles before us mountains as stony as real life. And since mountains, then valleys, plains with perfect infrastructures. Without engineers, contractors, workers, bulldozers, diggers, or supplies— raging highways, instant bridges, thickly populated pop-up cities. Without directors, megaphones, and cameramen— crowds knowing exactly when to frighten us and when to vanish. Without architects deft in their craft, without carpenters, bricklayers, concrete pourers— on the path a sudden house just like a toy, and in it vast halls that echo with our steps and walls constructed out of solid air. Not just the scale, it’s also the precision— a specific watch, an entire fly, on the table a cloth with cross-stitched flowers, a bitten apple with teeth marks. And we—unlike circus acrobats, conjurers, wizards, and hypnotists— can fly unfledged, we light dark tunnels with our eyes, we wax eloquent in unknown tongues, talking not with just anyone, but with the dead. And as a bonus, despite our own freedom, the choices of our heart, our tastes, we’re swept away by amorous yearnings for— and the alarm clock rings. So what can they tell us, the writers of dream books, the scholars of oneiric signs and omens, the doctors with couches for analyses— if anything fits, it’s accidental, and for one reason only, that in our dreamings, in their shadowings and gleamings, in their multiplings, inconceivablings, in their haphazardings and widescatterings at times even a clear-cut meaning may slip through.

I To dream of love, and, waking, to remember you: As though, being dead, one dreamed of heaven, and woke in hell. At night my lovely dreams forget the old farewell: Ah! wake not by his side, lest you remember too! II I set all Rome between us: with what joy I set The wonder of the world against my world's delight! Rome, that hast conquered worlds, with intellectual might Capture my heart, and teach my memory to forget!

in my younger years before i learned black people aren’t suppose to dream i wanted to be a raelet and say “dr o wn d in my youn tears” or “tal kin bout tal kin bout” or marjorie hendricks and grind all up against the mic and scream “baaaaaby nightandday baaaaaby nightandday” then as i grew and matured i became more sensible and decided i would settle down and just become a sweet inspiration

They sap man’s substance as moon the dew. A rope grows erect from the crown of the head. A black swan hatches from a pebble. And a flock of angels in the sky is taking an evening class on the skid pan. I dream, so I dream. I dream that three times three is nine, that the right-hand rule applies; and when the circus leaves the trampled ground will once more overgrow with grass. Yes, grass. Unequivocal grass. Just grass.

Wake up, your dreams are bad! Stay awake, the nightmarishness is coming ever nearer. To you too it is coming, though you live far from the places of bloodshed, even to you and your sacrosanct afternoon nap. If not today, then tomorrow, but it will certainly come. "Oh, pleasant sleep on the cushions embroidered with red flowers, Anita's Christmas present to you, she sat over the stitching for all of three weeks, oh, pleasant sleep, following the juicy roast and the sprouts boiled to pulp. As you drift off you think of yesterday's Fox evening news: frolicsome Easter lambs, the stirrings of nature, the opening of the new casino in Baden-Baden, with their new Australian coach, the Light Blues pip the Dark Blues by two and a half lengths in the Varsity Race— more than enough there to occupy the brain. Oh the soft cushion, the first class goose down! Lying on it, you forget the irritations of the world, this item for instance: the doctor accused of procuring an abortion said in his defense: the woman had seven children already, and she came to me with her youngest swaddled in newspaper because she was unable to afford diapers. Well, these are the court's affairs, not ours. There's nothing to be done if a has a cushier time of it than b, and, whatever happens, our grandchildren can sort it out." "Ah, asleep already? A pleasant waking then, friend! The current is already live in the wire kraal, and the sentries have been posted." No, don't sleep while the arrangers of the world are busy! Be suspicious of the power they claim to have to acquire on your behalf! Stay awake to be sure that your hearts are not empty, when others calculate on the emptiness of your hearts! Do what is unhelpful, sing songs from out of your mouths that go against expectation! Be ornery, be as sand, not oil in the thirsty machinery of the world!