_somniat ix (through the alcove 3)
I barely breathe
as I move through a cloud
of menthol-scented cigarette exhalation;
I can feel their lurking eyes
on the back of my head
scintillating probes that scan me
with such deep acuity
I can feel their edge
like a comb through my brain
each tooth snagging on forgotten tangles.

Off-key laughter pauses
when I’m halfway
between here and there;
I want to freeze and melt
all at once
but I know that if I do
they’ll catch me,
and they’ll ask me questions
for which I have no answers.

So I breath in
their used up smoke
and make my way,
one step in front of the other,
past them, all the way
to the men’s room door;
I grasp its rusted handle
and pull when I should have pushed;
my face flushes, hot,
and I hold my breath;
there’s a burgeoning laughter
but it dies before it starts;
somewhere elsewhere
there is a snap,
a subdued pop;
something, I don’t know what, has happened;
something has changed,
and it’s not me;
one by one they move off
toward this budding unfamiliarity
until one and all
they’re gone.

I ease up,
and finally exhale,
and this time –
at the door,
I push.

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somniat viii — throught alcove 2

Mohawks,
spiked waves,
waterfalls of hair
bleached into the darker shades
of stormy rainbow;
eclectic clothes
out of tune with any season
or any time,
ramshackle and hodgepodge
with black folds from which emerge
lots of of metal, especially chains
and crowning it all
rough black leather
patched here and there –
the final touch,
boots that chink and jostle
and spikes that threaten:
their flesh is all ghostly white,
pale zombies
with lurid painted eyes
that animate at stale jokes
and flat punch lines;
they laugh
and look over at me.

Compunction, degradation, mortification
or maybe it’s just collective guilt
from some ancient and lost source;
I don’t know,
but either way
I’ve got to go
for nature calls
and she won’t be resisted;
this means,
I need to go by them.

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somniat vii — throught alcove 1

Between here and there
there is exactly
one
infinity.

Off from the central food court
where the theater above exits
there is a spacious and long alcove,
a wide area of dust and disrepair
where piles of ceiling,
that leave gaping holes above,
still lay fresh as the day they fell
and long nailed up plywood prevents entry
into plush, though decayed, double doors
that once lead to a diminutive casino
where the faux rich used to wrestle
with erotically shaped one armed bandits.

With the exception of the restrooms
the entire area has been cordoned off
with caution tape that’s been torn more than once
and now just lays there, on the ground,
pitying itself.

The area is a favorite of the new crowd,
hooligans, delinquents,
the maladjusted and the malcontent;
they have begun to move in
and are gradually edging out the students
who still bravely man the central area
of these forgotten subterranean urban hollows;
these new youth, who travel only in groups,
are best left alone
for exactly how far they’ll go
and what exactly they’ll do
has not yet been tested.

So most the students
leave the rest rooms alone,
but with my new found freedom
and with excruciating need
this is where I wander to
when waiting
is no longer an option.

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2011 10 12 somniat vi the mountain

Before the first primate ever thumped his chest
and issued a grunt to show his supremacy over the world;
and before the first Neanderthal ever pounded out a flint knife
and stabbed it into his quarry to show that he was the master;
the mountain was here.

Before the first farmer accidentally strew out
the first seeds, only to his surprise,
to watch them grow into something edible
that he didn’t have chase after or rummage about for;
before the first raiders forged their bronze swords
and swept down on the planter
to turn his world upside down;
the mountain stood tall, snow peaked,
and unperturbed.

Before the first empire of cold steel rose
and crumbled;
and before the first great pyramid
or great wall
or majestic palace
or cheap hotel;
here was the mountain,
calm, collected, composed,
shaking off humans
as if they were fleas.

There was a time when man paid homage to the mountain
and built up at its base a small town;
the priests of the town seeing the magic in the mountain
would climb its sheer sides
and here and there,
they built shrines to natural spirits
as they would stumble upon them;
sacred spots
that only the sensitive could see;
but that town was burned to the ground
during some lost and forgotten, ill-intended war,
and the shrines were abandoned
to snow and to reason
until only their foundations remained
lost somewhere amid the evergreens.

Then, perhaps by chance
or not,
industrialists, looking for a place
where they could crisscross their tracks
chose the nearby valley
to build large stations
for powerful new steam locomotives;
and so again, the people came;
and this time a city was born
that over the decades eventually spilled out from its center
until it reached all the way to the base of the mountain
where as if to mark the moment
a tall, contemporary hotel was built,
and even as this hotel spiraled upward,
a hollow twisted construction,
below it was built a vast structure
complete with a subway station,
a shopping promenade,
a cinema for moving pictures,
and a deep subterranean food court
for the future jet set,
the beau monde;
tourists and artists came
not only from the city
but from places farther off
that not everyone had heard of
so as they could stay at the hotel
and go on pilgrimage up the mountain
searching for the old shrines
and hoping for an illumination
that had been lost
under the bright veneer
of modern day reason.

Yet rumors grew;
they always do;
and more and more people began to say
that phantoms lurked
down where they had dug too deep under the hotel
and when the sun seeped behind the mountain
the shadows grew too long, they said,
and the trees shivered in an unnatural way
while strange sounds could heard –
wild, primitive calls mixed in
with the laughter of a young girl
both from a past now gone
but trying to reassert itself;
yet perhaps it was none of this
that caused the area’s demise
for it was the economy that finally blew
a squelching slow motion pop
that left even the opulent
wanting
and found the city slowly seeping off
slouching away from the mountain
which as always remained
impassive and unimpressed.

The subway station was closed
in the hopes of keeping out the rift-raft;
the hotel was put on life support via government subsidies
and yearly fundraisers that took in less each year;
the promenade is now manned by a skeleton crew
and the food court is empty of business –
only open as a curiosity
for students who come to study
from the nearby and underfunded university;
more and more
calls now come to shut down the area all together
as youth gangs show more and more interest
in hanging out among the faded imagery
of the faux modern
perhaps seeing something in it
of themselves.

This is where I am
as I put one steady foot in front of the other
and slip past eyes that carry real weights;
laser beams that would pierce and destroy me
should they only take aim.

But I’m out of bounds
among the columns and shades
past the dripping puddle
past the clicking of the calculators
searching for another beat
no more page flipping for me
I am free
somewhere deep
under the mountain.

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somniat v

The change,
the moment,
the sudden inspiration,
is it on the inside?

Or a change
in the currents –
a subtle adjustment in the tides
of time
a quickening or a slowing
that yields to me
and shows me
the way?

Whatever it is
the path is there;
a moment when I feel so sure
that none will see me
that I slip up
and out of my chair
and go off center
away from the tables
and toward the formica coated columns
where shadows snake
under flickering fluorescents
that threaten to give out
at any moment.

With my heart
thundering in my chest
I move;
in fact, I float,
thrilled
to have actually done it;
just one steady foot
in front of the other,
and one more time again
until I am there
almost in the shadows
and soon to be
behind the columns
and unseen
in the out beyond;
where I’ll just be
another ghost;
and this one
with glasses.

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somniat iv

I’ve got to wait
until the way is clear
until there’s no one near
and no one watching,
but they always come
as they always go
and the presence
of that person
on my right
or on my left
is just the thing
that stops me
and I’ve yet to have seen the way
forward
without the odium that comes
from just being seen;
in front of me
or in back of me –
who could possibly care
where I go
or what I do?

But yet I know
and I fear
they do observe
and they do so discern.

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somniat iii

I sit among divested souls
as they page through
other people’s dreams
and punch out numbers on calculators
forever trying to catch the rhythm
of water that unevenly falls
from a stained spot
on the crusty ceiling above us
pitter-patter into a puddle
some where off to the left.

Drip drop
tap tap
drip drop
tap tap
drippy drop drop
tappity tap tap
drip drop
tap cliiiick –

I’ve got to go.

I’m tired of pulp
and untested numbers;
shrip, shrip, shrip.

In their own mind
they are a hero
in a colored panel,
but that reality
is frozen in time;
it’s someone else’s story
to blot out their own
and it’s shame.

Physical need
as taboo
leading to
forbidden things
you know nothing of.

I’ve got to go,
but as of yet,
I’m too afraid to stand.

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somniat ii

Under the city, even deeper
than where the underground drainpipes run,
beneath a subway station
where the trains don’t come anymore
and where no one’s yet bothered to tell anyone
the place is closed,
go home,
there is a small food court
that once because of its depth
used to catch the imagination
of the modern and the contemporary
but now is a lost place
where those who come to sit
no longer remember
the way out.

Eternally dissolving ghosts
move about in shadows
blending in with
walls and columns of sparkling formica
that must have all been but the rage
in some forgotten decade, last century
before cell phones
and PCs that fit in your bag.

This is where I sit
in the center of this food court
looking out at art deco
hideously cheap –
an artificial, superficial, base and simple veneer
of the lowest common denominator –
yet over the years
as it has fallen into disrepair
and the colors have unevenly faded
as unwashed stains accumulate,
a strange thing has happened;
for among the dim lights
there is now the hint of a kind of personality
that only belongs to the old
and the decayed.

We are all male here,
flickering through comic books
with calculators in pockets,
horn-rimmed glasses,
plaid shirts,
hair slicked back
and pallid empty faces –
all of us subtly tense,
expectant, afraid;
we all hear it
though none us acknowledge it;
the laugh of a young girl
that freezes us in our chairs
terrified
that change might be real
and it just might be calling
to one of us.

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