Consistently, year after year. Ray.
REPRINTED without the express, written permission of Sir Ray, but with immeasurable respect:
Monty please, Door Number Three
November 5th, 2006 ·
I am nothing more than the dreams that dream me.
Inventing games under the cover of innocent trees,
cashing a paycheck, working the latest gadget,
walking down the aisle, smiling for the cameras,
comparing the different boxes of instant rice
falling from the ceiling of the supermarket,
getting stung by bees, trying to cover my
naked bumps down an empty corridor
of footsteps and bells banging from
the inside of a locker Let me out.
There are three dreams that dream me.
Minus the one where we are holding hands,
our circle the sun in a foreign land our differences
a celebration at the apex of the union the rails
of the balcony come loose we say goodbye
to each other and spend the rest of our time ducking.
But this is not the one. The first is (and of course
these have no order; they come when they do
like Variations on a Broadway tune
played by a drunken Master after the bars
are closed from Chicago to Paris
in the space between the needle
and the rush in the breath of an open cork)
the one where the mushrooms turn sinister
and we’re chest deep in red liquid, the cheese
is wrapping tightly as we grow smaller and
smaller, our arms flapping and flailing.
We wake to the usual alarms but there is no escape.
And there’s the one where you’re hanging
by your feet from the top of a lamp pole
inventing Bungee jumping with your own
shoestrings with all that you’d believed in
at the bottom in a heap. The neighborhood cats
are rolling their eyes and the dogs are salivating
though they don’t know whether to bark,
lick or fuck you. It’s the one then
where it’s just you and the horses
following the sound of the creek
reminiscing about how insecure
she was in the mirror. Just you
and the horses navigating the darkness.
An empty flask broken off from the narrative.
A place where home has no map. A place
where you don’t feel here. And even that glimpse
of where you thought your senses knew it.
The one how light looks through black iron bars
and the shadows she left after she was long gone.
The one where leaves are hand-me-downs
from generations hibernating. You mark
it down as just another delusion of an
estranged mind. And now then the third one
(how we like to impose order, how we like
to simplify the world into something we
can understand like the mozzarella inside
our heads) is the one where I’m trying to
get home (yes the way she gives herself
after all the years of gorging on poppies
we thought were the other. The way
her voice sounds the first, the last, every time)
and I’m trying to get home (one here on earth)
but I can’t find the way and though she’s
left the crumbs I’m still a wolf
trespassing through gates and
covering my fingerprints, when
they (the keepers of the Neighborhood
the ones that insure that their property
values remain their highest, the
keepers of the civilized world)
round me up and put me in the Van.
There they proceed to shave me from head to toe.
Tickle my Feet. And laugh and laugh.
And go. And there alone in the cul de sac
where the signs say No Outlet,
I realize I shall interpret light no more.
I will no more interpret silence.
I cannot interpret them
any more than I can interpret you.
Rather we shall lose ourselves in it.
And when they come that’s how
they’ll find us. They will come
with their notepads and measuring
sticks and they will make what they
will of us depending on their mood.
A brooch, a hat. A religion. A crime.
They may even call it love.
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