How to fix your bike
you cannot separate the dream from the house
the house from the people
the people from the job
and the job from the dream - whether the dream is reality or not.
you cannot separate the dream from the reality from the minimum wage from the dusty floors the broken bicycle the back pain
from the from the
dream.
my sleep is dreamless.
If sleep is dreamless, life is turned upside down if you cannot separate the dream from the dream from the sleep from wakefulness from the dream of the house, the dream house, the one you leave every morning for the dream job that is the dream of a different kind of work, the dream of work whose worth is not expressed in minimum or maximum or average wage, the dream of a bike that isn’t broken, of sleep that isn’t broken, of a back that isn’t broken
but then if the bicycle is broken again I think maybe
you often hope that it wasn’t real,
that it didn’t happen that it didn’t happen that evening in the city centre
with some guy helping you saying don’t worry I have a sword I can protect us both
from the night like that is what you want to hear and cycling back
in the heaviest gear fast but better than nothing
that it didn’t happen or wasn’t as bad and will all turn out well in the morning
that everything will turn out well in the morning that the job is no longer
the same job with the same people that you have slept on the right side of your body not
the right side as in the right hand side though it could be but the right side as in
everything is fixed and your
neck no longer hurts
that the house is not the same house but a different house a house
without all this garbage in the hallway or blood on the walls perhaps a house
like this even
that there can be two mornings in a day when you fall asleep at 2pm
that the night passed quickly because you were asleep through all of it
In mediaeval times, a dream referred to the instant
of waking and remembering - so if a dream dreams
in a dream of dreams
did it ever dream at all? If it cannot remember itself,
did it ever exist? Did this house with its makeshift
walls keep out the cold or did it crumble gradually
onto the busted bike in the hallway,
A skylight rushing to meet your spine
and holding its ache the way a hydrangea
holds onto its blue, like something
it should say sorry for.
One kiss for yesterday
An angel approaches with a feedback form asking how I’d rate my life and I say I’m happy to have lived it, that I would do it again, if possible, as someone else, somewhere else, over and over again, to try all the lives I haven’t lived, to love all the people I haven’t loved, to see again the ones that I have, and with every life I would trust faith a little bit more, and would continue the work of others before me
if there was something more to add I’d like to say
let’s start having weekly dinners.
weekly coffees and weekly
movie nights. let’s go grocery shopping together,
let’s commute and pay our bills together and while we are at it
let’s move in. let’s repeat again what me and Lili excelled at
until we sucked at it, the insideness of it all
and the comfort of the landlord’s grey flooring that was more than enough
can you ask after someone you used to be? dumber
and more afraid. walking down the Chanonry
to the graveyard with Mathildes tiny penknife
we are not afraid we’d say,
we are not afraid
I want to feel like a burst water main
every day of my life,
gush out sparks and let my body
return to its puddle-state.
We are not afraid
to grow like mould over the landlord’s
bedroom wall, rain down
in ashen flakes onto his grey
frikandel skin
We’d slowly grow, you still at your own pace.
It’s okay this time around. Because you’d still add
To whatever that is mine, without dragging it out.
I wouldn’t have to wait, I wouldn’t even have to make
Myself small. Because along the walls we keep growing.
Will they figure it out? Not after till it’s too late.
They bring in the exterminator, get rid of every last bit of us.
They’ll repaint because there are still stains. And we’ll return
To the form, this time together. No, we each have our own to
Fill out. I’ll honestly tell you this time, embarrassments are fine.
I’ve been so rich in time.
Oracle
Someone spoke to me last night,
sat on my bed next to me and spoke. As if
I had never heard the truth before,
my room was lit by light after light
and light poured out into the street,
it seemed at night the sun shone
through him.
This morning, I turned over my bed sheets
like a page. I flipped back
but could not read what chapter
I was getting into, or had left.
Sometimes when I wake up I stare into the sun and think “wow I’m so lucky to have a house like this with windows like this big and broad and sunny”, however the house in and of itself is small, only 35sq metres, so not really fit for two people yet two people live there. The bed is nestled between two walls and it had to be jammed there upon moving in because it didn’t want to fit so every night I try to ignore the little bump below my back kind of like the princess and the pea except the peas are multiple and they’re running around below the bed and making my nights sleepless. Except for the moment of waking up I really dislike being in my bed because it makes me feel like a hermit. I can barely stay there let alone read and it definitely doesn’t give me a sort of truth. My bed is as uncomfortable (actually it’s very soft but being there is uncomfortable) as the harshness of reality and it definitely doesn’t foster dreaming.
In the morning, when the light hits, and I’m none the wiser than the day before, I collect that pea from under the mattress, hoping it’ll know something I don’t. I leave it close to the window, where it can soak in the sun. Slowly, the pea sprouts, its growing roots showing me something I didn’t need words for.
the girl who grows my vegetables who I am secretly in love with
a bit largely because she is the one bringing me my vegetables
(you know this, you love it most about me)
just last night emailed me to say that next year she and her fellow
vegetable growers will be growing
a fruit that is not a plant. a fruit
that is not a plant
sitting in the sun what a delicious feeling it must be
being a fruit but not a plant
reaching out my fingertips to feed off
the light shining through my gills
I think on a hot summer day I could grow my own set of gills
become underwater and weightless
only half-mammal now that I can finally fill my lungs
with all of you
Mass Produced Dream Catcher
When they are dreaming, they dream about oil rigs on the horizon
and light pollution, he dreams like honey glazing a hive entrance
he dreams of real toads, blubbery and warty,
padding across the ceiling and having toad-fantasies,
when they dream it’s a moon dropping into a canal,
A symphony in which all the instruments play something else
Dreaming is so loud, when you don’t cancel each other out.
I stay awake to try and find a single sound or note, to understand
What it is you are dreaming about. By morning I hope I’ll have
It figured out. Because I won’t be able to tell you about mine.
The neighbor alarm clock is ringing, and i lost one sock inside this big queen. Now i facing between going back to sleep having the terrible thought of losing a twin. This is a literal nightmare. I starting to feel a coldness taking my calf. Its crawling up my legs, around hips. Its inside. I get up from the bed, i open the window, scream the neighbor. She shuts her clock, i stumble and fall. I land of my face. The lost sock bled out of my open scar. Damn it.
Another night is lost. I’ll go about my day not being able to think of anything than the dreams I wish I had. But I know as soon as the night comes, I am in terror. With darkness comes the anxiety. What if I hear the mouse this night? What if she comes intruding in my room again? What if i wake up to her crawling up my wardrobe inches away from where my head rests? So once again I don’t sleep. I lie awake listening. Listening will protect me. Being awake will protect me. When I do end up drifting to sleep I have restless dreams, all of them including her, the mouse. And when I wake up and it’s still dark outside I lie and listen again. The seconds feel long but the hours are short. Time is a weird soup during the night.