Perchance, To Dream

What we take out of dreams, what we get to use from dreams, what we bring up from dreams, is all to the surface. Depth is the invisible connection; and it is in working with our hands on the invisible connections where we cannot see, deep in the body of the night, penetrating, assembling and differentiating, debriding, stirring, churning, kneading -- this constitutes the work on dreams. Always we are doing precision work, but with invisibilities, with ambiguities, and with moving materials.

-- James HIllman, Dream and Underworld

***

ABYSSAL PLAINSONG

2002


There is a God (some say),
A deep, but dazzling darkness.
-Henry Vaughan

While we sleep
the night hauls us
through deep billows,
cold and ever-black,
tiding us in surges
we can't hold onto
or name, just dream.

Lost in the marges
of that boneless toil,
we ferry the dead
in St. Elmo's Fire,
our pulse lucent
in their basalt veins.

Seals fan the
cold waters of our
oblivions, their
long-lashed eyes
weeping like beloveds
in lost windows
or children carried
off in dark hands.

We wander through
floorless rooms all night
as the centuries
glow from split
whalers and the
spires of lost towns.

No wonder when
the alarm clock
hauls us back
we're like someone
rescued from a riptide
who must sit awhile
dazed on the shore:

To him our day
is strange, almost painful,
as infinity ebbs
in scowling thunder,
leaving this scrawled
manowar-our
only plunder.



THE SEA AND THE BELLS

Pablo Neruda

Forgive me if my eyes see
no more clearly than sea foam,
please forgive me that my form
grows outward without license
and never stops:
monotony is my song,
my word is a shadow bird,
fauna of stone and sea, the grief
of a winter planet, incorruptible,
of rock, of foam, of the tide's
delirium: this is my loneliness:
salt in sudden leaps against the walls
of my secret being, in such a way
that I am a part of water,
of the same flat expanse that repeats
from bell to bell, in wave after wave
and from a silence like a woman's hair,
a silence of seaweed, a sunken song.

(Transl. Wm. O'Daly)

***

The folk tradition of the insular Celts seems to present to the mind a half-aquatic world ... It introduces a feeling of transparency and interpenetration of one element with another; of transposition and metamorphosis.

-- David Jones



Among the Graeco-Roman peoples of the Mediterranean, it was believed that contact could be made with the underworld by means of ritual shafts dug into the ground. The Greeks called such an excavation a bothros, while in Latin it was a mundus. The Celts seem to have held to a similar concept ...

One of the best known examples of a religious complex containing shafts was found in Holzhausen in Bavaria, where a rectangular earthwork, presumably a ritual enclosure, preceded by timber palisades of the same plan, contained three shafts of which the largest was about forty meters deep. In one of the shallower shafts, eight meters deep, the excavators found a wooden pole, set upright in the bottom of the pit, surrounded by an organic substance which, according to subsequent analysis, resulted from the decomposition of flesh and blood.

-- Barry Cunliffe, The Celtic World p. 92


***


TERRA SUB UNDA

From Oran's Well, 2003

You killed off all my
horses and then gave me
back just one, a huge
nag fresh from the hill
of Uffington. You
stood at the gate of
your mansion on
the Boyne and told
me to place all my
belongings on him
and ride on. I did,
and wandered far into
lands I'd never seen
before. But men who
journey long at last
for home, and short
of that become settlers:
in a valley between
wars I said whoa
and got off that horse
to rest a while. I
unloaded my life from
that broad back
and slept: when I
awoke, however,
the equine had
disappeared, leaving
behind an aquine
stair leading deep
into the earth. I know
to tend that well
carefully, and placed
it in the charge of
my feminine. Alas,
she loved me but
was wild, and one
day for a drink of
eternity forgot her
charge. That night
the well rose up
full force and galloped
out a lake. At the bottom
of every dream is a door
which looses all -- a
cork to green
infinities. I think of
the horse whose
back ferries us across
and whose hooves
clop gods below.
Might mare, font,
undermere, her
brown haunches stride
this poem to regions
I've yet to name,
much less swim. Braying
turbine, your eyes
looking ahead are
huge, like moons
seeking out the sea.
These waters are
your daughters,
the font of our ride.
I hold your mane
as the cold lake creep
to my knees. Ferryman,
take me home.




In our sleep and in our dreams we pass through the whole thought of earlier humanity. I mean, in the same way that man reasons in his dreams, he reasoned when in the waking state many thousands of years ago. The first causa which occurred to his mind in reference to anything that needed explanation, satisfied him an dpassed for truth. In the dream this atavistic relic of humanity manifests its existence within us, for it is the foundation upon which the higher rational faculty developed, and which is still developing in every individual. The dream carries us back into earlier states of human culture, and affords us a means of understanding it better.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Human, All Too Human"

***

The myth is a sustained, still-remaining fragment from the infantile soul-life of the people, and the dream is the myth of the individual.

-- Abraham, "Dreams and Myths"




THE DREAM FORGE

March 2005

If work is our yoga, our dreams dark
labors are its sutra, lessons of
unsheathable fire plunged deep
in awfulness. There is a furnace in the
basement of my heart, a hell
where imps grease old gears
and maul the presses where
my life is published, day after difficult
day, each a sum of hope and woe
balled tight and tossed into the
maelstrom, sustaining the engines
which roll me back here once again
for the next long daily fray.
Love's torture is also racked there,
desire's jezebells heaving their
cleavage in motions that cut me
raw and clean, their lips always just
beyond the ache of my kiss, their voices
taunting, swooning, accusing, their
sweet abysms always walking away,
finding me in my love faulty and
with means far short and droopy
of their own penetrate depths.
Each wave's folds and crash booms
down those metal halls in full
augment of ebb, descending miles
and fathoms down. Endless are the toils
and smarts here in the forges of that smith,
maker and renewer of what is both art
and its heart, all my bright gleaming
shores fabricated here by a brute
ugly man who will never see the
hosannahs of day, much less the
beloved I dream. Each night my day's
labors are sent down an oubliette
to plunge in the vat of acids
which tears me apart, limb from
bloody limb, to know the depths of
desire and God, where seven bright
swords steadily rise and fall,
gashing and dismembering and
setting me at last free. When I wake
there is no trace of blood on my lips,
only the faint salt staining the last
gossamer of fast-fading dream. - What
wildness, what awfulness, what tender
perfection was there in that room?
I wonder, as I drag my ass out of bed
in the dark and stumble on down here
to stroke up the day fires and
do it all over again.


***

... We have two forms of thinking -- directed thinking and dream or phantasy thinking The first, working for communication with speech elements is troublesome and exhausting; the latter, to the contrary, goes without trouble, working spontaneously, so to speak, with reminiscences. The first creates innovations, adaptations, imitates reality and seeks to act upon it. The latter, on the contrary, turns away from reality, sets free subjective wishes, and is, in regards to adaptation, wholly unproductive.

-- Carl Jung, Psychology of the Unconscious





THE STOCKROOM

Jan. 2004

Deep down beneath the heavy
covers of sleep while night birds
sigh regurgitate and sing
the blackened trees outside
I return again to that dream
of working in a stockroom
I haven't worked for years.
The dream boss has His
own reasons for returning
me to that that ever more
distant land, a lost
room which grows ever
stranger each time I return.
Last night I trudged through
yards of an old nearby
suburb, stopping in one to
freight off an old console
stereo - or was it a jukebox?
I'd hauled it to my car
when I remembered
to ask the homeowner
if I could have it so
I knocked on a white door.
A middleaged redhead
soccer-mom appeared
looking flustered to be
disturbed from whatever
she herself dreamed. "Taking
the stereo out back," I said,
and she waved me on
as if to fend far music.
I packed the thing in
the back of my new
Toyota Matrix and drove
on to the newspaper plant
I haven't seen the insides
of for at least five years,
& unloaded that musical
vault into a stockroom I
haven't seen in 15.
But the dimensions of that
room I knew instantly,
like an old song, its length
and girth whalelike, the tall
shelving units packed with
stick pens and staples
and X-acto knives and tape,
boxes of printed envelopes stacked
high, pallets of copy paper,
yes, yes: but this time
other things were stored
there - a huge coffee
percolator on feet,
roofing materials, a mud-
encased anchor, boxes of
dirty magazines arranged
by publication date, bins of
broken combination locks
and carburetors. What's
all this shit? I wondered
as I plugged the stereo
in a rummaged for something
to play on it, finding at
last an old Pat Matheny cassette
in a box on that scarred long
work desk I used to fill orders
on. The music was gutteral
and scratchy and wobbled
as if rising from abyss.
I could easily see out of the
stockroom, for all security
doors had been removed.
The Production Center was less
newspaper inserting facility
than smelter, with huge vats
of molt steel steaming
and shimmering a few
yards away. Third shifters -
always the most dubious
characters in a corporation
you know, working furthest
from the eyes of the Dayside
Management - smoked and
generally fucked off, moving
in shoals between the my
room and theirs. A young
woman with short blond hair
- like Pink or Gwen Stefani
of No Doubt, or someone
older perhaps, that wistful
waifish singer of The Plasmatics? -
eyed me cynically as she
talked with a co-worker of
streetside seductions, ripping
off johns while shimmying
through their hungry teeth.
I wanted to follow her but
could not, not in last night's
dream, what with two
auditors walking in unannounced
carrying clipboards and
a secret, boardroom intent.
I felt foolish, almost naked,
what with things in that stockroom
so long unattended and so
piled in helter-skelter disarray.
What could I do but let them
scrabble every nook like beetles,
counting every paper clip and
question mark gathering dust
on those shelves, scratching
their pens like pincers through
paper. I sat at my desk wondering
just what I'm to do in that vault
where my days slowly and
surely rain down, the receipt
of all I couldn't quite say
here though account there
I guess I must. It's been years
since I last did inventory
in that room, and the patch
has grown wild, perhaps
forever so. "Are You Going
With Me" pulsing and moody
in slow bossa firma on that
dredged stereo, the music
spilling a vein which returns
spent platelets and nouns
back to the source where
all the old stuff's retired
or renewed for the next time,
operating supplies for the cause.
What else was there? Busted
monster models, a cherry-
red Fender Mustang guitar;
pictures of girlfriends tacked
to a bulletin board; oars and
saddles and broken horseshoes
up in the mezzanine; spermed-
up wads of Kleenex and empty
beer bottles; the keys to all my
cars on a ring: Each had their
own shelf & wing & sub sub floor.
Nothing's ever quite lost;
all of it's needed in that
blue factory below where
today's new poem last
night was poured. The auditors
reported up to the Boss
and I woke up remembering
the dream and that stockroom
filled now with so much strange
crap - especially that big-ass
stereo playing songs I once
loved, and that pouty
impossible girl standing
in a halo of poured fire,
leading me on, drawing me
back in, never catchable,
never quelled, her eyes of
a blue neither shored nor
shelled though well her I will.

***

Beyond both the fear and desire, the black and white of the dream, is Hades of incomparable intelligence. Work with dreams is to get at the hidden intelligence, to communicate with the God in the dream ... Because the dream is black and white, its intelligence is neither altogether obscure nor altogether clear.

- Hillman, Dream and Underworld



The Boy-Charioteer in Faust Part Two leads the car of Pluto, or Hades; he is like the genius in Roman art, the fish-rider of inspiration; the cuculattus on grave-stones which guided the souls of the dead to the Otherworld; his is the vatic voice of the dream, black and white, for better and ill, speaking in higher and lowest sounds:

I am Profusion, I am Poesy!
The poet who's attained his goal
When he's poured out his inmost soul.
I too am rich with untold pelf
And value me the peer of Plutus' self,
Adorn, enliven, and make his revels glow;
And what he lacks, that I bestow. (5573-9)

***


WAKING DREAM

2003

The English word "symbol"
is the Greek word "symbolon"
which meant, in the ancient
world, one half of a knucklebone
carried as a token of identity
to someone who has the
other half. Together the
two halves compose one
meaning. A metaphor is
a species of symbol. So
is a lover.

- Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet

The fizzing half we
hold is the ocean's;
only dreams now seem
true. Looking out with
driftglass eyes, the
inland world seems
strange and ill-used,
scattered and scuttled,
ravaged by flame.
Voice balloons clash
loosened from mouths,
the landfills are
gorged with trash gods.
We wonder what could
ensoul such a mess,
and jail the votives
in vandal shrines
- TV, titties, tail.
These angels have their
wings dipped in blood
before they lift in song.
Their devils cure the tides
by quelling every wave
they used to ride.
Cathedral spires lay
jagged at our feet, like
unhoused clock arms
or compass needles
pointing to the wisdom
of the disorient.
It's certainly a raw time,
not neat like any knowing
that binds orders; yet
for us in our lifetimes
it's always been so.
We're used to this
nincompooping bliss.
This new scripture
inks upon a waking dream,
whose blue pages reveal
today a reversal or
inversion of the knucklebone
we once held - intangibles
are what we now know
best, while the certain
is that doomed Mariner
who'll never shore to rest.
I write my praises
on a sand of smashed
history - where chapels
and libraries and continents
of white cities have all
been ground to grains
in the faith of a raw tide,
in days of raw footing
& roars from every side.
Rise from this beach,
O Jonah, spewed from
yesterday's white whale.
Make of this vandal motion
God's weirding of his jail.

***


CAPE OF DEEPER DREAMS

April 2005

My dreams are more random
now, faded harps my angels
used to play for me in
brilliant strolling waves of blue
fret and ache and bluster.
Now I frequently dream in verse,
the angle of the descent and
discourse with shades pure
glossalalia, my inside tongue
all eyes and mouth. I know I'm
dreaming because I wake
ravished by a genius I can
only remember the sound of,
like a murmuring of a surf
beyond day-brightened dunes.
I wonder if I've voyaged
beyond one sort of dream
into its wilder terrain, a thrall
of sound whose sense is
aural, product perhaps of
all this listening and writing
each wave down. So when
I dream in the older way
I try to pay attention
in the old-school ways.
Last night I dreamed I was
sober no more, or was bent
on that ravishment, perambling
old bars of a lost great city,
each bar a tap assembled
from all the ones I drank
through for too many years.
Only I was walking bar to
bar in search not of booze or
even pussy, but rather
their salt integument,
trying to find a way to
enter and find a stool
that was right for the thirst
inside the old unslakable
greed; for James Bond-like
entries, all eyes on
me, violins sawing tense
and gorgeous lower
tones about my feet like
water, and ahead beneath
a single lamp the barstool
assigned to me by God
and a perfectly poured
martini on the bar,
gleaming a glacial, hard
blue undertow to all
I've since built over.
First it was a hotel
bar at 5 a.m., or several
of them in one swank
complex -- a convention
center perhaps -- the work
day's furies still fresh
in me and the first drink
of happy hour after years
without fraught enough
to require the right bar,
stool, bartender, crowd,
first drink, I dunno, but
such angst wove me through
two or three without tasting
booze. None was quite right,
the sought for god missing
on his shore, the one-night
stand sleeping naked next
to me in the ghastly
hour of first light so wrong
I couldn't wait to leave,
wrong for all the reasons
that sent me toward
the beacon of all wrongness
burning in the night.
And so I left that place
and ventured out into
a spring-seeming night
of city neon and hoary air
not winter any more
but far from summer,
a dewy fragrance hanging
in the eaves of stores
I walked under, like
some promised or
forever lost perfume,
as I made my ghost
peramble through all
the old, toothy bars.
I entered a dark
pool hall where I stood
next to the bar waiting
for a Budweiser and
wondering if I should
stay to romance
the barmaid, a conflicted
pretty-but-worn gal
in tight jeans and a
white t-shirt which
suggested weary, over-
weaning breasts which
were sore from nursing
too many men like me,
boys who'd gained
an appetite for their
long-lost mothers'
nipples. But in the
press of that hour
too many jerks were
jostling at the bar,
waving fivers like
fins of a school
of boy-men on a field
trip to salt's breasty
planetarium where every
heavenly body is put
on view. -- So I got
outta there and walked
cooled midnight streets
wondering where next
to go to slake my riven
needs, scanning through
my faulty memory a
rolodex of eateries
and nightclubs, bars
of every stripe -- not
to rock at the Aquarius
Tavern in Spokane or CBGB
in New York City or Fern
Park Station in Orlando
where all the bands I
never got to play in rocked
the rafters and then died.
Not to dance at JJ Whispers
or Park Avenue amid
disco divas and New Wave
wastrels who danced
like Sufis of bad flame,
whirls I could not drink
to any sufficient depth.
Then I recalled some
restaurant bars of long
ago a few streets over
that had a certain,
Scotch-ambered glow,
a possibility of drinking
and receiving what
the pickled half of my
heart will always dream
of in its desire for
the perfect buzz, for
drink without the
drunkenness and love
in endless bloom: a
tipsy free-fall through downy
rooms where all the
women know my name
and trade it guilelessly
from night to bed to night
to bed, hosannah and amen.
And so I ventured out
toward streets I barely
recalled, stretching a long
night out still further to
its remotest periphery
close to dawn, that hazy
edge of blackout and
deep sleep inside the bottle
of a body I never quite
could find. I peeped an
eyelid open to find our
bedroom washed pale blue
by a hot moon hanging
in the western windows,
a migraine gonging in
my skull, our cat scrambling
around the room, trying
to rouse me downstairs
to feed her treats. Sometimes
a dream allows my Cape
blue folds, plashes of old
angst and vitreous desire
which no one may hold
as they boat through.
The sound of those
lost years is both revenant
and resonant, a vintage of
naked peramble for
which these words are
scat and scrabble.
Cape of my wrecked
hopes for perfect booze,
horned Cape of waters
deeper than old dreams:
Narrow down for me
what passed through with
me on those nights
of wild blue screams.
Name for me the totem
which redeems that history.



And now that the hour bids me end, leaving dreams behind in their sea and turn to my day, I end with a dream, which is where dreams belong in a poem, according to Robert Bly:

DREAM

2002

In my dream some hard-
learned instruction is spoken
in a dear room, making perfect
sense. And lost when I woke.
I keep peering under a
migraine to recover what
seemed a so ripened truth
but I can't even get a hold
of the fish's tail. So I let it go.
Instead I read Keats and Rilke
and feel the fist of dawn
slowly unclench in the dark,
exhaling so softly what eventually ignites.
A first bird, then another,
contribute their audible degrees.
I'm home now, back in
your tidy green esplumoir, Master,
cresting the dark thermals
like verbs in a cawing wave.
Then the dream swims through me
and I lift it whole from the water,
but it no longer glitters and gleams.
"Just keep coming back,"
I recall the voice saying
as I lost the whole thing in my pillow.
I don't know if it was the alarm
or a tail or this song that slapped me awake.