76 Dreams poems

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!

“Dreams Are the Royal Road to the Unconscious” —Freud The King’s Highway to the Dare-Not-Know —but I beg my rides and oh I know these boring roads where hundreds and hundreds of cars fade by in hundred-hundreds of flashing windows too bright too fast to see my face. I am steadfast long hours o’ the morning, I am so sad. An old-time trap, an ancient sad horse and his farmer stop by the way, they’ll take me one mile on my way —out of my way—is this the Way? I used to think I used to be happy, but is it possible to be happy? What is it like?—like Plato oh we’ll copy it at large and oh plan a city where all the distances (where? where?) are walking distances. June 1947

You and I thigh deep in Suwannee River then in a bathtub. Spanish moss clogs the drain and a man carrying a green towel interrupts. We send him away once more knowing he'll return to watch. We're photographers shooting on location for Sylvia Plath's upcoming book,Savage Beauty—wrong poet or wrong book, I know, depending on how you look at it—however, I'm the one who is white this time, you're darker, maybe Quechua Indian or Spanish, like actor Antonio Banderas, with very defined stomach muscles and a slick throb of a penis. Years later I write a book about our affair. They bring me on one of those daytime talk shows, and before being reunited, we are kept in separate rooms, the television split screen, green-towel man in the audience. I'm still white, so are you, both of us middle-aged with freckles and strawberry-blonde hair. Later I'm the viewer at home thinking,Like hell they'll fall for each other.

a trembling old man dreams of a chinese garden a comical old man dreams of newspapers under his rabbi's hat a simple tavernkeeper dreams of icicles & fisheyes a sinister tavernkeeper dreams of puddles with an angel of the law in every drop the furrier's plump daughter is dreaming of a patch of old vanilla the furrier's foreign daughter is dreaming of a hat from which a marten hangs the proud accountant dreams of a trolleycar over the frozen river the reluctant accountant dreams of his feet sleep in a fresh pair of red socks the silly uncle dreams of a history written by a team of Spanish doctors the uncle in the next apartment dreams of the cost of Katmandu the retired gangster dreams of a right turn into a field of sacred lemons the dancing gangster dreams of a carriage, a donkey, & a hand that holds the ace of spades the grim man with a proposition dreams of his fingers entering a pair of gloves the excited man with a proposition dreams of the letter E torn from the title of his poem the remarkable elevator operator dreams of the marriage of karl marx the easy elevator operator dreams of a seashell at the entry to the thirteenth floor the candid photographer dreams of a wooden synagogue inside his brother's camera the secret photographer dreams of a school of golden herrings drifting out to sea the yiddish dadaist dreams of rare steaks & platonic pleasures the rosy dadaist dreams that a honeycomb is being squashed against his face the mysterious stranger dreams of a white tablecloth on which black threads are falling the stranger whom no one sees dreams of his sister holding up a string of pearls the asthmatic tax collector dreams of a row of sacred numbers the rebellious tax collector dreams of a bathhouse set among old trees the robust timber merchant dreams of a wind that blows inside the blacksmith's bellows the sobbing timber merchant dreams that his hands have pressed the buttocks of his dreaming bride the man with a fish between his teeth dreams of a famine for forty-five days the man dressed in white dreams of a potato the savage gentile dreams of a dancer with flashy lightbulbs on her shoes the repentant gentile dreams of her fingers bringing honey to his lips the fancy barber dreams that his hands massage the captain's neck the silent barber dreams of a rooster with a thread tied to one leg the salty bridegroom dreams of horses galloping they swirl around the bridegroom's house the genuflecting bridegroom dreams of what his bride slides through her fingers he sees it white & trembling in the early sabbath light the fat man in the derby dreams that it is spring that his seed soon will be falling through an empty sky the ecstatic man in the derby dreams that if he dreams it his words will turn into flowers

in his white light dreams at Discovery Hut Herbert Ponting meets the Siberian ponies he’d once photographed on the Terra Nova the ponies no longer flexible refuse to wear equine pajamas or trap their hooves in bamboo snowshoes for his Royal Collection inside the stomach of ice the ponies more still than life soften the silver shadows of Scott and his team and turn from Herbert’s bromide into the drift and whiff of themselves