what dreams are

19.

if i dream when i sleep

i never remember,

i never know why

i wake up afraid

for months 

i lay in between

awake and dreaming

aware that i’m was not

able to do either:

still i wondered if this is a dream

how can i be certain?

once i dreamed that 

a convenience store opened,         

             in the wall of my bedroom: 

they sold red bull and jerky              

             terrible light-heated pizza,

customers had to pass through my apartment 

to do their shopping

business was brisk,                           

     a stream of consumers flowed across my bed

never talking to me

then the dream lasted days and weeks

dreams don’t last that long do they?

dreams aren’t designed to be eternal;

but reality just buzzes around

like annoying flies you can’t catch

so we hope dreams never end

even when i can’t dream

i know that’s true

homecoming

21.

As i was disappearing

i discovered a keystone;

i found passwords and user names, websites

tools i’ve been building for years

without telling myself,

to create my own world

with its own colours,

it’s own laws of physics,

it’s own grammar and philosophies,

its own qualities i appreciate

like pink and black skies

like heat-vent wind

like planes falling from the sky

crashing into the field

i lay down in

calm in the strange homecoming

you can’t see or hear this world

and you only have my word

to believe or not

later you told me

you wanted me to come back

you helped me find the pieces

and put them together

i asked why

why did you do that

it was so reassuring to be there

why would i want to leave?

my fyction

20.

the day i answered a phone call

i forgot my life

i forgot how to live my life

i forgot the road back, 

i wasn’t interested in the road

it didn’t exist

​

​

i created a map

without longitude or latitude

without cities and deserts

​

i created a legend

guided by a new history

unwritten laws of direction

​

i found a new place

in a personal present: 

a place i called mine

as real as any other

waiting for the future:

that believes in its own fiction

that knows how to separate realities

torn between competing perspectives

of reality and creation

​

the future though is like everyone else,

not certain what to do next

or how to change anything

to not remember

22. 

Not remembering is worse than remembering

there was a phone call, an echoed voice

and after — 

nothing remembered for months 

a phone call that told me of

profound change;

hard change that is the icy rain whipping

across my hair:

it’s not coming

it’s here and it’s too late

a phone call:

after that 

all i have are holes,

the spaces between misshapen memories

that aren’t mine,

but tales that a nurse told me

after the phone call

months disappeared 

i didn’t notice

i was occupied

wondering if this is where i should be

if there is a territory i belong to

inadequate beliefs

23.

Maybe you believe in modern medicine,

maybe you believe nature

maybe you believe in nothing,

maybe you don’t what to believe

maybe your philosophical argument

has never met a real life consequence

maybe i know however

it’s all inadequate — separate or together;

maybe i know

you can depend on faith or science 

or aliens or people,

but you can’t believe in anything