I’m not sure about the movie, as I’m dreaming now
in daytime. I’m breaking off from television, its delivery
of savings and promises. And I can’t help but wonder
how many tidal waves we’ve bundled into bottled water
while pretending everything can be easier. But dreaming
as an offshoot of sleep is secondary anyhow. As in,
it almost never happens, this happenstance and circum-
stance of late-night dinners and various levels of exhaustion.
No, I never even dream. In thoughts I see the world
in pictures, imagery, a National Geographic photograph
you need to double-check and see if it is real, there’s
something about things so vivid that can be fleeting.
This is why I wonder at your music, in any dance—
that one where the man just after thirteen drinks
swaggers past the jukebox and out the door, a woman
somewhere follows with her eyes or red high-heeled
shoes, her ambition, there are silk-screen visions
of uncertain fortunes reassessed after frequent striking
scrawled across his back. A billboard for impermanence
he shows to those who believe. They flick a lighter, flick
a light against the bathroom stall, the glamour you
reaffirm must reside beneath replacement yellow blood,
yellow skin, these flakes and cracks of antiquity
in the meantime, this paint you choose for agony,
or as a stand-in for your breath. This is how I dream.
I live and sleep and wake in sweet dissolving daylight,
reminisce at the times you might answer me
with a look, a hope there are buildings that remind you
of alternatives, sure that hurricanes fill canals and then
the bloodstreams. From any distance long enough, even
the world breaking into halves can be an omen
of impending growth. Like muscles break and grow,
or stalks from palm leaves surrender to gravity, float
on air and then the sea. There are the evenings
I cannot close one eye, but watch you as you taste
and then re-taste, devour insistence until it’s spent
like wishes, the breaths you recollect. A tee shirt scrawl
you pick up and head for exits, a souvenir you might
prove yourself alive with. It says, I had sex with Jean-Michel
and all I got was this stupid tee shirt. Days later
you might revise yourself again, black marker
against the fabric. I had sex with Jean-Michel
and all I got was gonorrhea. You wear it everywhere
in Manhattan, share it with those you’re closest to,
the ones that can really follow. I dream in pictures,
you live your life like tee shirt shops, each day a slogan
you forget until there’s someone staring at your boobs.
later in the afternoon. In night, we are a set of bedroom
sculptures, your shirt cast onto the floor, my eyes
are never closing. You whisper in your dreams
and my words become so slight, it’s no wonder
you cannot hear. Me? I cannot bear the television
distractions as your skin sticks against these sheets,
reminds everyone there is no clean laundry. Tomorrows
for me are sets of images waiting to find the words
each of us exhales and reimagines, gets up and tries to paint.