Feeding the Baby

But I, too, want to be a poet to erase from my days confusion & poverty fiction & a sharp tongue To sing again with the tones of adolescence demanding vengeance against my enemies, with words clear & austere To end this tumultuous quest for reasonable solutions to situations mysterious & sore To have the height to view myself as I view others with lenience & love To be free of the need to make a waste of money when my passion, first and last, is for the ecstatic lash of the poetic line and no visible recompense [[by Fanny Howe]]

Last night was a great dream night. I was at my grandma's house sitting on the sofa. Now that sofa was used real hard when we were kids. It was a bus, a horse, a ship at sea, a nest, a torment, a coveted resting place where I rested my head and cried on Sunday's when mom played the radio concerts and the violin music would seem so sad and so true that I wept for myself. Anyway last night there was a problem in the polar ocean of the carpet. It wasn't cold e nough to form the solid Ice flows that the polar bears need to get to the fish in winter. So we were taking a rush emergency shipment of Ice Bergs to them. These were huge blue white icebergs and the were crashing down together into the sea and starting to form into bigger islands and platforms, it looked like success was at hand. Then an enormous fissure opened in the earth at the bottom of the sea. So big that all of the ocean water and all of the icebergs were swallowed up. The fissure went all the way to to ...

I had my first dream about the house on Church Street . It was night and I was in the drive way sleeping next to someone in the bed of a pickup truck. I was warm and cozy and I was marveling at how I felt safe enough to sleep outside exposed to the world. There was a storm coming and people came out to the street. I got up and looked up the street toward Castro. There was an enormous river of icy, cold wind flowing through the sky above the street. Like a river, except the cold wind was moving from a lower point to a higher point. Like a waterfall in reverse it flowed towards us but then rose up over our heads. The whole river was moving closer too and soon the low point would be on top of us. I didn't like the look of that. The power, violence and chill of that river of air was frightening. I started up to the porch calling to the others to take shelter, when a rouge wave of the river broke off and attacked the house next door to ours. It flowed low to the ground and pushed into ...

Theodore Roethke The Waking I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go. We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go. Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me, so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go. This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.

We were in this dark thicket on the outskirts of a forest. There were odd mushrooms growing in the underbrush and you picked one up and bit into it. I expressed alarm and you said “It’s ok, the poisonous part is just this bit inside. You eat around it.” The poisonous part was white and tubular. I felt clumsy and uninformed for some reason. We crossed a small wooden bridge and looked down at a very shallow muddy creek. When we entered the forest it was very dark and there was suddenly an ominous sound from deep within the forest—a low, guttural utterance of warning. A panther came to mind. We decided not to continue on our way and then the dream ended. The night before last I dreamt that you were some wild earth woman, very much of the goddess variety, if you will. Well the mushroom dream is very difficult to understand. I simply don’t see why you didn’t know that only the inner part was poison. Experienced Aunties can always nibble around the poisoned core. We did the tra...

Last night I was in a very weird bookstore. It was sort of a ren fair kind of setting, but I knew it was one of the old Printers Incs. This one was once the beloved home of the postal workers after hours. There was a long dark wood bar where they could get a pint of lager after work and walls and walls of books. Books stacked on floors and under tables a glorious dusty half lit mess. The people who worked there were all the best eccentric types, young and old, not following fashion but some inner urging they set up stalls inside the bookstore and offer their wares. Cynthia had a fire under her table, for cooking. She had on a t shirt and she had long hair. She was getting something from under the table and her shirt tail dragged in the flame. The flame was blue and innocent looking. It looked soft and pale, transparent licking gently up her back and falling away then returning and lingering and she didn't notice. So I called to her, look out, Get on the ground and roll. She didn...

(Dream from September 2004) One night I spent all my time roaming around the neighborhood and house on IVY street. No one had ever moved in following the end of our family owning it. The rooms were full of all our old things. The debris and mess from the last time we stayed in the house were still there, undisturbed. We were trespassing but it didn't seem as if anyone would ever stop us. We found rooms of old and beautiful furniture. "How did we ever think this was junk we could leave behind!" We said to each other. We took away wonder mirrors and tables to decorate the new house on Church. It was so nice being back on Ivy with all of you again. Then one afternoon I dreamt that Kepler's Bookstore was closing. Going out of business. I wept and cried and sobbed until I couldn't cry anymore and slowly gasped to a stop. Then I thought about how mean I was when I left Kepler's how I said bad things about them thought bad thoughts and I started crying again. I di...

Last night I dreamt that I lived in a beautiful, but slightly shabby old house. I found that there was an extra room in the back which I had not known about. It had a door that opened onto a backyard and from there the larger neighborhood. I asked my husband why we didn't just paint this room, which was lovely, and use it all the time. But he just said no. I woke up thinking about that room, and I realized right away that the house is my mind and room my subconscious. I wondered if the backyard and neighborhood are the collective subconscious? Everyone dreams about houses right? Do they dream about particular houses? I dream a lot about the house I lived in from age 5 to 12. It was on a hill and belonged to my Grandparents. Often when I dream I am there the house has been abandoned. I'll tell you about it sometime.

DREAM ON James Tate Some people go their whole lives without ever writing a single poem. Extraordinary people who don't hesitate to cut somebody's heart or skull open. They go to baseball games with the greatest of ease. and play a few rounds of golf as if it were nothing. These same people stroll into a church as if that were a natural part of life. Investing money is second nature to them. They contribute to political campaigns that have absolutely no poetry in them and promise none for the future. They sit around the dinner table at night and pretend as though nothing is missing. Their children get caught shoplifting at the mall and no one admits that it is poetry they are missing. The family dog howls all night, lonely and starving for more poetry in his life. Why is it so difficult for them to see that, without poetry, their lives are effluvial. Sure, they have their banquets, their celebrations, croquet, fox hunts, their sea shores and sunsets, their cocktails on the bal...

e.e. cummings - in time of daffodils in time of daffodils (who know the goal of living is to grow) forgetting why, remember how in time of lilacs who proclaim the aim of waking is to dream, remember so (forgetting seem) in time of roses (who amaze our now and here with paradise) forgetting if, remember yes in time of all sweet things beyond whatever mind may comprehend, remember seek (forgetting find) and in a mystery to be (when time from time shall set us free) forgetting me, remember me

I had an unusual dream last night. I was working and living in the kind of job I have now, but a little different. I had definitely left Dennis. I was single. I went to a restaurant on top of a mountain. It was part of my job shepherding around the "talent". I parked my car down the mountain a way from the restaurant, which was like a mountain lodge, and I was enjoying the museum in the restaurant. The talent and his coterie were artists and blog authors. Their art was on display in a large room. Each piece, which were the usual rectangles of paper with paints or other media, were stored in trays slotted into cardboard boxes so you could set the boxes on tables, cafeteria style, and the audience could walk past the boxes and slide out the trays and look at your art. That was really shocking to me, the accessibility of the art. You could touch the pieces. And in fact there were punks there taking the pieces out and adding to them. Maybe defacing, and maybe that was part of the...

My dreams have been violent, detailed, sharp, easy to remember, distinctively different. I dreamt I was entering a parking garage to let Vadim Khayms drive his truck into the garage. It wasn't open yet, too early in the morning, and when the door did start to open it was so big it scared me and I only nearly missed being clobbered by it. Then I went down the ramp to see what was keeping Vadim and he was falling out of the truck all bloody and hacked up. I dreamt that the huge house we lived in had been entered and all of our things thrown upon the lawn, and no one else seemed to care.

I dreamed that we were visiting this beautiful community. There were some two story multifamily dwellings and couple of cottages all set in a peaceful green landscape that had hills and ocean fronts. Very serene and friendly, lots of people I knew lived there, but it was pretty hard to get a place there, you had to be approved and there was a long wait. Then I realised that if you did get in and you decided to move there you could never leave. NEVER. For some reason once you moved in you couldn't leave. Was that a deal breaker? Do you think this is my dream heaven?