mid-jan dream land

i dream i'm visiting my family but their house is a different one, dated heavy brick/wood and out in the country.  in my care are three small birds, each a different color, that i bring inside and say i need to look after.  at some point two of the birds are startled and fly away from me, and i scramble to catch the black and orange one on the mantle except my family's dog has seen it too, and beats me to it by inches.  i think, oh no, oh no, and there is a wet crunch in the dog's mouth.  i feel just terrible.  the dog keeps crunching my little bird's bones.  i try to be okay with it, and let it go.

when i'm not dreaming there's a chasm in my chest-area that i keep tumbling into unless i distract myself.  it's okay and it won't last forever.  all day i have random, vivid memories of rooms i was in as a child.  the kitchen of my family friends' grandma's house in ogallala.  i walk to and from work and around downtown lincoln like i have for the past few years.  i remember the auditorium of tri county k-12 school.  at lunch i sit in sp ce reading comic books, scooting my chair across the floor to keep my face in the sun as it moves across the wall in the afternoon.  i remember how my parents' friend cindy taught me how to get an eyelash out of your eye by holding the lid outward and blinking.  i think about what to do with my life, about what it would be to get a new job and move somewhere alone.  it seems terrifying but like a strength i could have if i needed to.  i write in my little red book and it's all dumb rambling.  i haven't tried to write love poems yet, because they feel too magical/powerful, but i will soon.  i try to tell people how i'm feeling but it comes out as "i'm crazy, sorry, i'm crazy, i'm fine".

in a dream i go to my childhood friend courtney's house, in the country again.  there are brown horses wandering outside, a sturdy woman lets us in and i go to the basement.  people my age are hanging out like a party.  some things are normal but in other places there are sloping pits in the floor with plates of bent metal, and metal railings on the stairs with a gap you have to squeeze your skull through to get by.  i cut off half of my toe on something on the floor and it bleeds and aches.  i try to bandage it.  the people i'm with frown at it but don't really help.  i keep going ow, it hurts, and looking down to see half of my toe flapping off, then hanging by a thin strip of skin, then the half separates from me.  these other pretty girls who are there happen to have packages of medical gauze and neosporin, which they give to me with drunken sympathy.  i dress the wound and go upstairs.  there are tabby cats and kittens on the kitchen table.  i go outside and cindy's husband pat is there, shirtless and very muscular.  they are castrating the horses, weirdly.  the screaming horses are tied down to the ground and they cut off their testicles, then dump wheelbarrows of smoldering embers and ash on the wound.  i leave to waking.

12/27

for the past couple days i've been sort of jogging to/from work, in a fit of missing the exercise from and swiftness of my bicycle.  there is still so much ice everywhere.  the running is kind of awkward in my work clothes with a jostling backpack but it's okay, it feels like i might be starting on some kind of quest.  too soon the flesh in my mittens is wet and there is a steamy halo spreading under my fur hat.

today on my way home i startled a hawk a few feet to my left.  it was first just a curt whoosh of air and a cloud of gray feathers, from the pigeon he'd been eating.  he landed nearby on the overpass and regarded me sternly before continuing to eat.  where he had been was a patch of bright red blood and yellow corn spilled undigested from the pigeon's gizzard. 

that's pretty much all that happened so far today besides staring at tumblr at work (and working some).  i guess we'll see what else happens. 

fermata to solstice & farther

do you remember how many moths there were last spring
someone said they blew up from down south
there's something off with the climate now
as we cruise gravity-less further from childhood;
last spring it was moths
and explosions of roses

my seasons are eating each other but not like
fish eat each other, in slippery gulps, more like
a lion eats his own cub

i have long found it
difficult to focus.

and everything
else is eaten by boredom.
i can steel my ribs well enough now
at least.

and i crumble now and then from
this lady body or
because of a typical dad-given unease
i don't know
do other dads give their kids eating disorders??

sometimes i can imagine
my spirit animal is a shark
when i put my black eyes in
smelling blood

bleeding like a stuck smiling
tell the world
i'm sorry it's so easy
to love me

because imitation
is no different from authentic
in the water

and it took/is taking me longer to learn
how a natural animal
should want to

spooky poem 1

a wet itchy dock and a bark-boat that
will maybe be our vessel bound

for seams, slots for my pennyfingers,
weeping botfly holes.

i've been accepting my death already in dreams,
mom hands me white handfuls of pills.

swallow gnats mouthing in your voice
the fine gentle names for me that settled from the silt-stir.

i've just been looking for
slits to dip my penny painted fingers in.

lashing on heavy bundles to
be fed to the portal.

tenth month

i dreamed my cat dandy had kittens but something wasn't right and nobody would listen.  she had birthed two and i knew one at least was still inside but nobody would listen. i could see it through her belly skin which was milky semi-opaque like dough stretched thin.  eventually i could poke my fingers in through a hole in the skin and pull the gray mouse-sized kitten out.  things were okay then.

life is good.
though the day-job lately leaves me feeling like a half-thick undergrown fruit at the end of the vine that's decaying to a shriveled umbilicus.  stunted. 
i feel ready to feel the readiness to slip down another channel.
once i you know figure that shit out.

my energy is shunted elsewhere.
i meditate by cooking.
i day-dream about my good man.
i try to keep feeding my friends
as we meet in this day-waning landscape
amidst a variety of simulated warfares.
us vs. them in high definition.

how many good days do you think we'll have.

religion

anemic dreamnotes

i dreamed that a small leopard owned by my sister came in my apartment through the window, intent on attacking my cats.  i was sluggish and couldn't stop it in time and it mutilated one of their hindquarters before i grabbed it by the neck and hurled it back out [the way wild animals are solidly muscled under skin].  i dream about my cats when it feels like i have a lot to take care of, life-wise.  or i dream about kittens or birds, dozens of them in fantastic colors that i am now in charge of looking after.
when i have a fight with close friends i dream about my sister.  when i fight with a close friend i usually dream i am beating the fuck out of my little sister, except my fists are slow and mushy.
i guess i'm writing about dream things.  i have not been dreaming much lately, but it's starting to pick up again and sometimes leave me feeling a terrible implacable sadness that lingers into the day like smoke.  these are autumn feelings maybe.
i dreamed the apocalypse again the other morning, it started in the rocky mountains and a widening hole opened up in the earth that grew.  when you're on top of a mountain the rest of the world feels impossible to grasp; the chasm was like that but a black anti-finality plunging downward, growing.  you're with packs of people [the way eyes look in disaster scenarios]. at the end it began to rain, and the rain turned to a soft white slush and the only sound was the hushed pat-pat-pat of precipitation over the dull throaty wind noise of the chasm.  i woke feeling sad and accepting about the end of the world.

it took me a month to get my car fixed.  this was a discouraging mental block i'd like to avoid more, seeing an easy solution but being paralyzed by some unnameable sluggishness.  i am checking many things off of many lists with tenacity.  i am really "manifesting" in ways i find pleasing, i like to think.  i am turning twenty-six years old very soon, this is mostly just fine.  things are pretty eerily great and i feel pretty solid in the world.  just great.