Three Dreams on a Somnolent Afternoon (redux)

I.

I went under last summer. I was tedious. I was trite. Summer raged. I withstood, until I couldn’t anymore. Lids often closed as I approached. Blinders blinked. It was forever the moment after the storm. Summer claimed closure. I sang bereft of benevolence. I stood alone. Summer anchored itself in wafts of my being. I sang contrite. I whispered sinecures to hourly priests. I rankled raffish pincers downtown. Summer melted with ease. I bobbled adrift. I fished for fifteen words. I wasted my time. Then six words found me, and I stopped fishing. Summer was no more.

II.

The last wastrel in an open sky. The voices echo down from above — well, if they’re echoing down isn’t the “from above” assumed? Ok, but the editor is supposed to stay out of the way for a while. I dreamt that I was in Gala’s kitchen asking her about the water for the rice. She was making rice and beans, but just as easy as it was Gala it was Olga too. “How does this top come off?” I said. “It’s an incredibly elaborate way of camouflaging a pot — the water goes where? How do I take this apart?” The rice had been soaking for hours. I put it back in the pot but it felt soft, and it was broken open like the rice in chicken and rice soup, and so I put the rice back in the pot, which I managed to open — “god damn over-elaborate thing.” And I wondered what I was doing there dreaming of Gala, which could be Olga.

III.

There’s hemming and hawing and there’s scritching and scratching, and that’s what’s happening upstairs at this moment. The scritching and scratching of renovations being done so the folks upstairs can move out. Their place has gone without renovations for forty years (“I don’t need no mule, Jack!”) So on and on it goes with the scritching and scratching, the sawing and drilling, the hammering and jammering… and at some point the water in this stack is going to be turned off when renovating time comes for the ancient bathroom — above where I sit at this moment — it’ll need to be replumbed and reapportioned. Oh, baby, take me to the bayou and drop me on thee anthill heap. Take out your washboard and tambourines. Start with that polyrhythmic scritchy-scratch ‘cause that’s the only type I enjoy. Take me away, spirit!

What I’m Reading:

. . . you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,
you see it too
and you realize how that image
is simply the extension of another image,
that your own life is a chain
of words
that one day will snap.

— Ai / “Conversation”