Welcome back, poetry people; this week is centered on the theme of dreams. I had a bit of a double whammy these past couple of weeks. I got my seasonal sickness, which only got worse before it got better, and I went and got the pneumonia vaccine right after and sent myself right back to bed. I hope you won’t hold it against me that I am doing another somewhat relaxed newsletter this week. I am not going to get into dream analysis or anything like that, though I am sure you will go wild with these if that interests you. I am coming at this from a very personal angle, as usual.
I’ve always struggled with sleep disturbances; these are born of a combination of trauma and natural differences in my sleep rhythms. I experience sleep paralysis, sleepwalking, and night terrors, along with difficulty in falling asleep, combined with an inability to do any activities in the evening. I am useless after probably five PM, but I won’t shut down until midnight when my auto shut-off function takes over. A very annoying contradiction, to be sure. Thankfully, I have found a supplement to help because full-blown sleeping pills are a no-go for me.
For many years, I simply claimed I didn’t dream of avoiding uncomfortable conversations altogether. That wasn’t really true, though. Since I have gotten married, I have learned I engage in other dangerous activities when asleep, including marital activities, using the computer, and cooking with kitchen equipment.
These sleep disturbances spurred much of the early difficulties in my marriage, to be honest. I would be exhausted from not really getting restful sleep and come out to find things different than I left them. Sometimes, items on the computer would be deleted, dishes would be disturbed, even broken, and I would think my husband was doing this, not to mention the physical pain that went along with minor bumps and bruises and my husband’s rising confusion and frustration. Thankfully, we figured it out, and I can finally get some sleep!
Just a shadow
I can only assume it is because I have sleep paralysis that many dreams feel like dreams within dreams or astral projection or something. I don’t think Astral projection is taking place in a literal sense, but always in dreams, I have the feeling of floating above myself, watching what is happening to me.
This piece, in particular, was one such dream in which I was in a big house I'd never literally seen or lived in. It was filled with objects I’ve never personally owned but I knew were representations of my things, past and present. They were all crumbling away to dust.
As I tried to walk through this mansion in slow motion, I kept falling and tripping, always in slow motion. A feeling of ennui over how little I had seemingly accomplished washed over me. Halls with nothing save one huge painting shifting around on the walls, spots where pictures of family, awards, or diplomas should be; instead, there is nothing.
Walking through a library, I take books off of the shelf, their beautiful leather spines, uneven pages, and shiny ribbon markers disintegrating to dust as I take book after book off the shelf. I frantically pulled and watched them all fall to dust in my hands, piling up at my feet.
There is and has been only one decoration on any of the walls throughout the house, and everywhere I go, it follows; it’s a painting, even bigger and more ridiculous than the glamour shot photograph my mother had hanging in our home, the center of the picture shrine of me. The painting seems to be haunting me.
Just A Shadow
I walk around a house full of eroding day-to-days.
Bumping around, not interacting with a thing
I trip and fall, yet no one hears me scream, crawling,
Groping around mountains of reminders of who I used to be.
Someone with talent, schooling, aspirations.
Someone with heart, industry, a semblance of personage.
As I meander about, there is a feeling of loss
Every day, one more book crumbles to dust
Yet, every time I pass the great painting in the hall
Makes me shudder to see my shadow perfectly line up—Originally published on Medium.com in the Power of Poetry February 17, 2023
Stolen Soul
This was a strange and disjointed dream, not a running scene. It was filled with many close-up photograph-esque shots flashing at me and flashbulb lights. My grandfather was a “photographer,” among many other things. He had a lot of professional camera equipment and used it to abuse me and other children.
This fact, which I could not remember for years, shaped my personality under the surface, even as peer pressure to conform to societal standards shaped me from the outside into this unrecognizable empty shell.
I hate having my photograph taken, as does my brother. My mother, I can only assume, out of want of control, took up photography as a hobby. My brother’s and my extreme discomfort was not of any consequence to her. Never mind school or other social functions where you got in trouble for not being willing to be photographed. Needless to say, I learned how to smile and retreat into another land where pictures didn’t exist.
I didn’t know this was my reality when I started my Instagram account for reselling, but I felt my unease growing again with showing my face for this reason. It didn’t seem to keep the unease entirely at bay; to simply keep my face out of the frame, I just felt like a headless Barbie doll, torn apart and redressed in defiance. I felt the memories surfacing, trying to break free. Once the truth came to the surface and I had written about it sufficiently, though, I felt the desire to start putting whole pictures of myself on my Instagram.
Many times, when I feel these flashbacks starting to brew, I have a dream that starts to allow the emotions to breech, preparing my mind and centering me on the subject at hand. I often write about the feelings and images contained in that dream. Then over the coming days and weeks, I am waiting and bracing for the memory to burst; sometimes, they are just a few waves on an otherwise calm ocean. Other times, like with this realization, it is a tsunami threatening to wash me away without these stabilizing pylons I have set for myself.
Stolen Soul
With the click of the shutter, you took from me.
Every bit visible, and then you set to digging.
First, you framed my eyes.
You couldn’t abide witness to your crimes.
A long fragile neck, clutched in angles, framed to stretch.
Constantly choking, unable to draw breath.
Arms ring a face blurred and black.
A trick of the camera, a dirty lens, a speck.
You wipe me off, then you cut off at the legs, long and obtusely bent.
There’s no running off now no escape.
Screaming, you capture even my organs, the essence of me.
My gears gum up, and I stop working.
Now a broken toy, pulled apart and tossed away.
Just a subject for your photography display.
Now I’m empty, every bit you clipped, you stole and kept.
Not leaving even a scrap, so I abandoned the cutout in space that you left.
The representation of me reforming over the approximation I created.
No mere image, the growth of living energy, harnessed by my decree.
Now released into the universe to grow and expand.
I will exist whether anyone knows, accepts, or takes me by the hand.—Originally published on Medium.com in Bouncin and Behavin Poems March 6, 2023
Dream State
This dream was set in a real location. A health food store I used to visit with my best friend from Florida. Her family already made reasonably healthful choices, but after her mom, whom I looked on as a second mother and now have had to adopt as my only real mom posthumously, got cancer, we shopped there almost exclusively.
She wasn’t there with me. I wandered the aisles shopping alone, the check stand beeping and mysteriously ringing me up as I went through, but was devoid of a checker. Heading out into a self-propelled version of the gridded-out monstrosity of a “town” we lived in Florida. Complete with empty Crown Vic’s and golf carts roving streets crossed with shark-infested canals and the occasional gator crossing my path.
Instead of opening the door to any of the homes that existed in Florida. Mine or my friends, I opened the door to a house I only really remembered from pictures, even though I knew I lived there until I was around eight. I have since recalled some of my time there, but at the time I had the dream didn’t really remember my life there.
I go from silently screaming and trying to push my way through the front doors of the house to bursting onto a stage, set and waiting for me to perform. As I would have in real life, I unquestioningly leap to action, dancing frantically, spinning off the stage. Falling and falling, trapped by sleep paralysis, blinded by my sleep mask, struggling without motion, screaming without sound.
Dream State
Wandering alone
through an
empty life
Running confused
through vacant aisles
of an incense-hazed
store filled
with things
I used to love
No one
manning the
green-lit check stand
yet hollow beeping
echoes in my ears
I bag my overpriced
specialty garbage
lug it into the sun
trundle over
empty sidewalks
stumble across streets
automated cars speeding
between white and
yellow lines
Ready to dispassionately
flatten me
at the slightest misstep
My key
clicks into the lock
I step into a house
I have only heard described
observed in photography
A place I can’t
return
a burned-out husk
collapsed inside
Positive I'm
screaming
I push with
all my force
all I feel
is hoarse
No one comes
no echo reverberates
through these
vacuum-still corridors
only dust curtains
hang in light panels
Pushing through
curtains onto
a blindingly lit stage
music plays so loud
in my ears
the choreography
starts involuntarily
Prescribed motions
carry me across
mind blanks
for the time
it takes to complete
my impromptu routine
As I take my
final bow
my vision finally breaks
through the light barrier
Stumbling
off the stage
through the blaring light
expecting to drop
into a lap
dropping into a never-ending
pit instead
I lie awake
immobile
unable to grasp
which way is up
what task is next
Lashed down
bound so tightly
I can’t get a look
Desperately scrabbling
with strap and hook
Finally, the rope flings free
sending me floating
into eternity
All feeling and
thought disperse
I allow all tension
escape into
the universe
When finally
nothing do I feel or see
I simply cease to be
That’s when I awake
to the real nightmare.
Reality.—Originally published on Medium.com in Bouncin and Behavin Poems March 13, 2023
Downstairs
I am fairly certain that most people who remember their dreams anyway have had a dream where they are falling. As I said before, I won’t sit and analyze every little detail here, but this is a very common trope, if you will, like appearing in a group setting naked. My falling dream is set in a particularly terrifying place. We lived for about five years in the same split-level home with my maternal grandparents.
My father and grandfather had to rebuild the stairs that connected the upstairs and downstairs portion of the home when we moved in or shortly thereafter, and the stairs, while sturdy and properly sized etc… were never finished off. Particularly, the sides were never finished, which was what made them most dangerous for me.
There were fairly large gaping holes along the side of every step on both sides. My dad and grandfather couldn’t get their booted feet down them, for example, but my entire leg could fall down, and my mother’s calf to the knee could slip on down.
I fell down the stairs constantly. I spent maybe a year or more, I am not sure of the timeline, in that house with no glasses, and started being expected to go up and down multiple times daily as soon as I was approximately four years old, at least when that happened was about the time I got my glasses. My brother being born spurred my blindness being caught. In case you were wondering how I spent so much time with my grandparents, as I mentioned before, we all lived together when I was between the ages of 3 to 8.
Now, this giant zipper mouth of a staircase swallows me up in my dreams over and over. Like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.
The shared delusion
Falling, like Alice
My rabbit hole
A never-ending staircase
Descending
Into the depths
Not to hell
To the downstairs
The stairs
keep extending on and on
After only a
few tentative steps
I trip, as always
Not falling end over end
I slip into
The unfinished space
The rectangular gaps
Between the platforms
Floating above
A great open mouth
Teeth forming a rail
I see it disappear
As I plummet
into the stud-lined shaft
Tongue rolling over
Shutting out the light
Which is better?
Falling forever
Or waking
With a thud
Downstairs
—Originally published on Medium.com in the Power of Poetry March 23, 2023
Stray Thought
This was written one morning as I woke up from a nightmare that was fading, mostly because I was distracted by a hair trapped beneath my sleep mask, stuck to my face, getting in my eye my mouth, making my skin crawl. The combination of bad dreams and creepy crawlies almost made me puke as soon as I woke up.
The dream on its own could very easily have done this to me, that is true, but the added sensory overload was a very unwelcome cherry on top. By the time I got the hair off of my face and pulled the bit out of my mouth that had broken off, I couldn’t get the dream back and write it out, leaving me ill at ease, so I wrote this instead.
Stray Thought
Identical to a
Snaking loose hair
That squiky
Writhing feeling
Creeps up
Memories in the night
Immediately identifiable
Mimicking that second strand
Disconnects from follicle
A damnable turncoat
Incurring instant wrath
An unwavering task
Taking over your body
Until complete
Frantically scratching
With repulsion
At eyes and mouth
Running to the mirror
To ferret it out
Every millimeter of skin
That felt the touch
Crawling with revulsion
Not until the offending sensation
Has been plucked off
And flushed away
Can lights be put out—Originally published on Medium.com in Bouncin and Behavin Poems April 15, 2023
Morning Muse
After adjusting my medications and starting my daily writing habit, I started to notice a really encouraging change. I wasn’t only having nightmares anymore. Not only that, but I wasn’t only being plagued by that same old sleep paralysis demon. Suddenly, there was my muse, waiting for me to fully awake, gently ushering me into the waking world.
Did this mean all was better, that I never had another nightmare or negative thought, and all future poetry would be lovely rainbows and roses? EHHHHHH, that was a big red buzzer going off because that ain’t going to happen. Still, I’m traveling closer to homeostasis with every boundary I set, every part of me I find, and start watering and feeding, possibly for the first time ever.
I ran straight to the computer and wrote this after the first time that happened. A happy night and an easy wake-up that was worth recording.
Morning Muse
laying bleary eyed
you come to me
whispers of distant past
songs of perfect futures
only lingering
through laced crusty lashes
breathy dulcet voice
a perfect ringing eminent haunt
guiding my every move and thought as I rise
I can’t put my finger on where you linger
yet you surround me
whispering love notes into my mouth
every time I breathe deeply
distracted by your aura
stretching
swishing my arms
through the memory
of you
the scent of you—Originally published on Medium.com in Bouncin and Behavin Poems May 6, 2023
Dream A Little Dream of Me