dreams – WALKING ON THIN ICE

Lady’s dream spirits

July 10, 2022 No Comments

Lady’s drawing and explanation of dream spirits from last night’s lucid dream:

“Dream spirits I saw last night. I asked them if they were manifestations of my mind or if they were external, but I don’t think they were able to speak, or maybe they don’t speak English, or they didn’t want to. When I confront these things lucid dreaming, they seem startled, sometimes angry, like it is unexpected that I see them. Benevolent or indifferent spirits normally, but odd-looking. Material or old bodies inhabited by spirits of either ancient humans, dolls made by humans, maybe spirits that take on anthropomorphic forms out of bone, sticks, mud, teeth, rags, hair, skin of their own volition, maybe just there.”

buncha stuff – music, dreams, poetry, art, the 3 Fates

December 14, 2016 No Comments

Kathy Kieth, the editor/publisher of Medusa’s Kitchen, published my Stations of the Lost (for Lenny Bruce) poem online Sunday. This is pretty amazing since it has something in it to offend almost everyone. I wrote it as a stand-up comic routine for Lenny Bruce, and I thing he would have liked it.

As Mae West said, “Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.”

This is my 15th appearance in Medusa’s Kitchen since October of last year when poet D.R. Wagner included my found Ferlinghetti poem at the end of his weekly feature. I am honored to have become a monthly member of their crew. My next feature will be Dec 23 with my anti-Christmas poem/song Ex Christmas.

http://medusaskitchen.blogspot.com/2016/12/our-lonely-orbitsong.html

Right Sock Wrong?

We are born in cave of shadow
washed in birthing pan
walk with shadow in search of sun
till washed again at end

How well are our ways wound?

If I put left sock on left foot first
instead of right sock on right foot
does it make a difference?

Or yesterday’s right on today’s left?

Does the moving shadow
of my belt buckle on the floor
portent play of day?

Do things change if I put my pants
on left or right leg first?

What about both legs at once?

I know kindness to others,
listening, caring, compassion, patience
sways day’s way.

But what of stretch or no stretch?
yawn or no yawn?
left or right side of bed arise?

Is there a right right
and a wrong right?

Of the mother thread of life
Clotho spins and sings of is
Lachesis measures in song of was
and Atropos cuts, sings will be

Do they care what sock I wear?
or right left of wrong?

– Smith, 12.14.2016

Lady and I woke at 3:20 this morning and lay there talking.

Told her in my dream I was a young 40’s Harrison Ford and was lying on top of a bed with my ex-girlfriend Melania (our next First Lady) who was her current age age. We were both fully clothed and it was not romantic. I was worried I wasn’t going to get the movie role I was trying out for, and she was helping me prepare. I asked her why she kept breaking up with me and she said because I was so insecure.

Then Lady told me her dream.

She was back in elementary school, drinking beer (Guinness Stout), but was an adult. In fact all her classmates were adults too. She was taking stuff from her purse and putting it in the supply cupboard – 20 packs of Post-It notes, cookies, some other stuff, and slices of roast beef.

“That must have been some purse.”
“It was.”

waiting in line dream

September 12, 2016 No Comments

Waiting In Line Dream, Cleveland, OH, 2016.9.12

Stepped up to the counter in a hospital and gave the guy my two prescriptions. He diddled and dawdled forever and frowned a lot, looked a bit like the actor Wes Bentley in American Beauty who filmed the dancing bag. Some of his friends came along the hall behind me and he talked to them awhile through the glass, ignoring me, then when they went through the exit door, he glanced at me and went with them. I waited for over an hour.

His manager came up and said someone would help me shortly and I snapped someone’s already helping me but he went in that door to talk to his friends and never came out. Manager looked angry and I felt bad for getting the clerk in trouble.

A young woman with long straight hair came up to help me. She pulled out a bag of peanuts in shells and cracked one open, and pills fell out instead of peanuts. The pills were irregular sizes and shapes, reminded me of brain worms. She made me eat one, then started cracking the rest of the peanuts to release the rest of my pills. Told her she didn’t have to do that, I could do it later, it wasn’t an efficient use of her time. She smiled at me in appreciation and left with the peanuts and never came back.

I crawled through the window and went looking for her. Found a large group of people in a meeting in back and looked at all their faces one by one, found her, she slumped down to avoid me, found her again, she laughed.

Was back at the window, wife hugging me from behind. Other folk came and went without actually helping me. I beat my fists on the counter, shook the partition, but then quit because it was counter productive and I felt ashamed of my outburst.

Then while ignoring me, they started helping people to my right through my window, giving them forms and pills, telling me not to worry, it’d just be a minute.

Finally a line of 13 people came out, arms around each others waists, all laughing, and did a little chorus line dance step – they were all the people who hadn’t helped me and I thought this must be some sort of psychological experiment I’m unwillingly involved in.

They disappeared, and a large black maintenance worker lugged two huge black garbage bags out and dumped them on the floor next to me. Out came a bunch of moist four-inch-square jiggling black chunks and I realized these were the remains of the people who failed to help me, and I wondered why the chunks were black since all the people who’d failed to help me were white. He went back and brought out the corpse of the straight-haired girl – her clothes were disheveled and exposed her shaved pudenda. He tossed her in a corner and a small white boy who was waiting for a doctor to see his mother started wrestling with her in front of a glass office full of African Americans in black suits and I hoped the wrestling didn’t disturb their meeting.

Then I woke with the theme song of Zorba the Greek in my ears.

Waiting in line for service in waking life is bad enough – but waiting in line in dream?

eye bugs stalking vision

September 1, 2016 No Comments

dreamseed

Two dreams, neither much fun..

We all had to walk in slow-motion because we were imprinted behind a 3-D force field green screen which made turning or walking difficult. I kept saying this isn’t logical, we don’t have to do this, I’m going to wake up and get out of it – and I woke and was free and grateful.

Then we were in a long medical line outside under an endless tent waiting for a pill. They gave it to Lady K who was in front of me, but when it was my turn, they looked at me and said “Oh, you’re in too bad of shape for this, you need a shot first” and took us out of line. The nurse told me she had to get something and left and we waited, and waited, and waited for hours. I was getting angry, went looking for her unsuccessfully, finally found an open pail of strange goo I knew was what I was to be injected with and was going to inject myself but didn’t have a needle and didn’t know the dose and was worried I’d overdose, but went looking for a needle anyway when the nurse suddenly reappeared, clothes disheveled, gigantic fake eye lashes on her lids, and she was saying “They never arrived, the plane never showed up” as she took off the left lash, but when she tried to take off the right lash, it stuck and dangled so I reached over with thumb and finger and gingerly lifted it off like a bug. All this time she was cackling crazy-like and fluttering her lashes flirtingly at me. Told her I needed the shot and she took off again. Suddenly I see her running down the sidewalk with several patients and Lady running behind her and Lady waves to me so I run rapidly after them raising my knees as high as my head like a Monty Python silly walk and just barely see them turn into an underground passage where I finally find Lady sitting calmly at a table under colored lights drinking a latte and she says “You really need your shot” and I wake up again.

Night Fare

Dreams oozing left of me
reality rushing right
neither one hospitable
and nary a pipe in sight
spider eyes flirting
needles over long
glowing goop in bucket
this is not my song
eye bugs stalking vision
madness foaming wild
won’t tell me my mission
treat me like a child
night schemes running rampant
sun hiding day
need some grass to clamp it
down to mellow may

– Smith, 9.1.2016

dreamweave

back in bees-ness + psychedelic steampunk dream

August 2, 2016 No Comments

last of old hive Daisy

We back in bees-ness.

Bought a box of swarm honey bees two days ago and installed Hive Ivy out in Ashtabula. The last two hive were Daisy 1 and Daisy II, and we figure Queen Daisy I, II, and III have had their say.

Hive Daisy I the bees disappeared the first week of February after giving us 125 pounds of excellent spring and fall honey. We think bee diarrhea weakened them, but there were no bee bodies so we really don’t know. Hive Daisy II started off with a bad queen, the workers killed her, we improperly re-queened and the workers killed her too, so we quit because we couldn’t afford anymore, but Lady’s father bought us a swarm from another beekeeper.

Placed new Hive Lily on higher ground closer to her parents’ house.

Where the old hive had been there is a clump of bees clustered beneath the beehive stand. I think they were the remaining female workers who were out gathering pollen when I moved the mostly male drone hive down next to the pond.

After we were done setting up the new hive, I noticed a strip of wood blocking part of the entrance, and as I knelt down to remove it, a bee stung my upper lip. Pure liquid fire, intense pain. It’s still swelling – I have thin lips, but my upper lip now looks like Angelina Jolie’s bee stung lips. If it gets grotesque enough, I’ll use it as my FB profile photo, though most of the swelling’s inside my mouth. First time I’ve been stung above the neck. Lady was stung once on her right temple and it made her dizzy, woozy, shaky, enough so we were worried.

Should have fall honey this year.

When Lady woke me this morning I went Wow Wow Wow There’s no way I can write this dream down.

I was in an Alice in Wonderland old timey psychedelic Mexican town with a lot of characters who were my people. There were snakes, and shape-shifters, and people with tentacles. We were trying to find a guy named Clay who’d disappeared after telling me what to code but had never gotten back to me on how the testing went.

The people I was helping had come to me because I was the last one to see Clay. They kept giving me small amounts of marijuana and laughing. As Lady woke me I’d just told one of them You can never have too much marijuana and he laughed and said How about a small amount of marijuana and a badge?

When we started out I thought they were angry with me, that I was in trouble because I’d not coded my program right, but I’d taken extensive notes of what Clay had told me as he’d taken me through this strange land in which I’d understood nothing but this time through after awhile I realized we were going through the same places and events as I’d been with Clay, that I’d written good code and now we had to find Clay and save him.

It got so strange I began taking notes in my back pocket notebook and when one of them asked why I said This story is too good not to write and he said Don’t use my name and I promised to change all the names except Clay’s, but after awhile I gave up taking notes because there was too much happening, all of it strange and surreal, the colors explodingly vivacious. I even called Lady to explain I’d be late getting home.

When Lady woke me at 4 a.m. so she could go run 10 miles before dawn, I staggered out here to the keyboard lurching back and forth off balance not quite awake and now I’m sitting in my undies sweating in the heat needing to badly urinate my morning bladder typing away like mad with two fingers and the cursor keeps jumping around so some of this is up and down the paragraph between words so I’ll have to unscramble it but this is the best weirdest most surreal dream I’ve had. I could gladly live in this dream forever.

Dusty Mexican roads, failing antique pickups, intense vibrating colors glowing everywhere, Mexican music, Zeppelins floating in the steampunk air, the dream went from me thinking I had screwed up the programming code to having more fun than is possible, and I contributed to the adventure, figuring out some of the clues, saving a few of my people as we were shot at. They were wearing long ragged earth-tone western overcoats with colorful scarves and earrings with black mascaraed eyes and they were funny folk, droll, witty, would make jokes with serious faces to make me think I was in trouble, then hand me a few buds as they laughed.

I could see the dust hanging in the air from driving falling-apart pickups too fast through the desert, could see the mold on the dimly lit dingy brothel hallway walls, could feel the crystal trichomes on the gorgeous red and yellow and green and blue streaked marijuana buds they gave me. Must have had 20 to 30 pounds of grass stuffed in my pockets, yet none of us ever smoked any of it during the dream – we were too high on the adventure itself, didn’t need it, although I got a buzz through my skin just handling the stuff. One dude handed me a card saying here’s a clue and the card was 9 large vacuum packed buds that had glowing crystal trichomes I could see from two foot away.

This was a three-day dream – 1st day Clay gave me the specs as we walked through the wonderland, 2nd day I wrote the code, 3rd day we went to save Clay. Lost so much of it between sleep and wake but what’s left is pure treasure.

When I was smoking a little every day, I could not remember my dreams, something to do with the short term memory buffers being wiped by the THC – I knew I had dreampt, but not what.

Now I’m in my 4th week of not smoking, the dreams are coming fast and fortunate, and if I wake during them, I come out with lots of detail. This is worth being unstoned.

Could be the best dream I’ve had, although almost all of them are surreal fun . . . darn few bad ones.

new hive Lily

the headless Johnson dream

July 30, 2016 No Comments

A small bird flew in our kitchen window and tried to escape out the permanently closed stairwell window.

She was afraid to leave that window because MandyCat had gone into hunter mode and was quivering with desire at the top of the stairs.

The window’s 10 foot above the landing, so I got our broken 4 foot ladder and a broom and gently forced her down onto the art ledge where she was so terrified she was frozen in fear as I picked her up and sent her on her way.

I’m wondering how come the gods don’t help me on my way. I suspect they’re too amused at my struggle and like the entertainment.

The Headless Johnson Dream

New record. Remembered my dream three nights in a row. What there is of it anyway. Bunch of us were discussing what was wrong with a new statue of a man seated in a chair looking exactly like the 1915 statue of mayor Tom Johnson in Public Square, and someone said we should cut the head off. I said “That’s brass, isn’t it? Brass is much harder than copper. Not sure we could do it.” So of course next segment of dream I’m out in public, in sunny daylight, cutting the head off with a hacksaw blade – no hacksaw, just the blade. Then we’re all walking around, me carrying the head with one hand and my arm stuck inside the body – which is weird because the body weighs over a ton – and I’m worried because it’s daylight, there’s people everywhere, and I say “You know, someone’s going to notice us, and remember.”

Then Lady woke me just before 4 because I like to be up when she goes for her 12 mile pre-dawn weekend run so I have a feel for when she should be back in case there’s a problem. Believe being woken from the dream last three mornings around 4 is what has enabled me to remember them.

maybe a sparrow? feedback — friend Martin Sokolich says Louisiana Waterthrush, and online fotos seem very close

Bad Want Ad Poetry & Presidential Debate Dreams Cleveland 2016.7.28-29

July 29, 2016 No Comments

Bad Want Ad Poetry & Presidential Debate Dreams Cleveland 2016.7.28-29

So many of my dreams are mundane extensions of waking life.

Tonight’s dream was ridiculous but low-key, kind of common. I was wandering the subway tunnels of New York City wearing a cheap brown ill-fitting suit wondering if I should go through with the debate. I’d been accidentally selected as the seventh person in the Presidential debate on television which started in an hour somewhere in the Empire State building. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, no one knew who I was, didn’t have any Secret Service folk, and was aware there was no way I could win, so just kept walking, thinking, drinking two cups of coffee. Finally decided to go through with it for the message, the chance to stand up there and tell the truth, make jokes at the politicians’ expense. Was bounding up the steps of Grand Central Station to get a third cup of coffee to get my tongue jamming when I woke at 4:08.

The night before, the metal handle of our frying pan suddenly became flexible and the eggs slid out on the floor as I picked it up.

So we went downstairs to a decrepit underground new age beat coffee shop where folk sat around on tattered couches surrounded by low light and lava lamps and read poetry from the want ads in the newspaper.

They handed me a newspaper to read from and I couldn’t get my voice or cadence right and they mocked me. Told them I could do it, but this time I couldn’t decipher half the words, unsuccessfully tried to fake the ones I couldn’t read and they told me I was worthless and dismissed me – and they were right . . . rude and crude, but right.

So not much of a dream, but it is what it is.

1 birth, 1 death = 2 extra sensory perceptions

July 27, 2016 No Comments

Liberty Lynne Green 5 hours old 7.26.2016

Strange interconnected stuff going on. I’m reminded we are not singularities, but rather interwoven web.

1 birth, 1 death = 2 extra sensory perceptions.

Got up yesterday morning at 4 instead of 5 because Lady was leaving for an 8 mile run. She told me Dedra and brother Jon’s baby wasn’t born yet.

Did back stretch exercise, put on my jeans and t-shirt, turned off the bedroom air conditioner, then realized I should write a poem for the coming baby, but kind of deflated because how do I of all people write a baby poem. I’m 70 years old, never had children, and had myself sterilized 40 years ago to make sure I didn’t accidentally conceive.

As I walked into the bathroom, the phrase “baby being born” flashed through my mind, and I thought it was a fine line for a poem, so sat down on the toilet lid and wrote this in a minute

Small new life creeping
into big old world
as night slips to day

Baby being born

then titled it “Liberty Green 7.26.2016” because the parents had decided the name would be Liberty if a girl and Lincoln if a boy, and for some reason I was sure she was a she. Poem was done before 4:25.

At 5:25 my ma-law called saying it was a girl. Went to hospital to see her and found she’d been born at 4:18 a.m., which is within a minute of when “baby being born” flashed through my mind.

I have no verification except telling my mother-in-law on the fone at 5:25 I’d written a poem and already titled it Liberty.

But I do have proof of a previous interaction.

In 2006, my ex-girlfriend artist/photographer Masumi Hayashi’s spirit visited me in London in my dream within minutes of her being murdered in Cleveland Ohio. The dream was so powerful I got up and blogged it. Few hours later a Cleveland poet emailed me after reading the blog and told me Masumi had been shot and killed for telling someone to turn their music down.

Masumi and I had broken up 20 years before. I never dreamed of her, never thought of her, we never spoke, yet the night she died she appeared in my dream and tried to take me away from Lady. The Pulp Sculptress of Chicago told me I had been Masumi’s strongest relationship, that she’d never gotten as close to any of her other boyfriends in the two decades since. (2006 Masumi blog below).

And my new born niece announces herself in my mind as she’s literally being born.

This is good. I’ve gotten away from seeing the magic, have become mundane, weary, cynical. This is a reminder of how all is connected even if it appears to be discrete segments, and I need to open myself to this again because I used to walk in magic but have stumbled into being ordinary – and none of us are ordinary.

The wall between magic and ordinary seems to thin in birth and death.

Here’s the Masumi Hayashi blog from ten years ago.

2006.8.18 – London, England

Had another dead dream. I woke in tears. Then the cat bit my toe.

Mother Dwarf was in the rest home – they were giving her a party because she was the only one left alive. I arrive and a young, beautiful cream-skinned lady starts dancing with me. Lots of people. Hors d’oeuvres. I say nice party. She says yes, but nobody’s here. What do you mean? She points to mom sitting behind the table – there’s no mom, just a mom-shaped hole cut in the wall. We go thru the hole, trace down events. Find the rest home had burned during the night and Mother Dwarf was dead. So brown lady and I go watch fireworks. She’s hugging and kissing me, telling me she loves me. I laugh, say this is going to sound weird, but what’s your name? She becomes sad. Says Mer. Ask her last name. She says Jam. That makes me remember – she was there 9 months ago when we 1st brought mother dwarf to the home. She loves me because I was good to mom. Everything is fine. Then we’re back at the party and unpleasant Japanese ex comes up, takes my hand. Insults Mer. Mer leaves. Tell ex that was sad, Mer seems nice. Ex sez yes, but I’m stronger. I wake up, crying. Get up to come down, to tell Kathy my dream – and step on the black cat sleeping at my feet, who screeches and bites my big toe. I call to him, apologize, get down and soothe him.

Last dead dream had holes cut in the expensive hotel floor. This has mom hole cut into wall. What am I missing here?

Today’s email from Cleveland Amy concerning my blog this morning about my dream last night in which Masumi appeared:

Steve,
I don’t know if you’ve been told yet, but Masumi was killed in her apartment last night by another tenant in the building, a 19-year-old guy. The artist John Jackson was also killed–he lived in the same building. I don’t know any more information. Both Masumi and John had been complaining about the guy playing his music too loud.
I read your blog about your death dream in which your “Japanese ex” appears, and thought it was eerily appropriate.
Hello to Kathy and hope all is well on your travels.
Amy

My reply to Cleveland Amy:

Amy – I had no idea whatsoever… when I first wrote the blog this morning, I used Masumi’s actual name… then thought that would be rude, ungentlemanly – unfair to her, so I changed it to “my Japanese ex” to be polite.
This is seriously spooky. Do you know what time this happened – because my dream was between 6 and 8 this morning which would make it between 1 and 3 last night your time.

No way can this be a coincidence. . . has to prove something because I never think of Masumi unless folk ask me why I quit dating for 20 years until Kathy came along.

In the dream I thought the cream-skinned lady could be Kathy.

artist/photographer/teacher Masumi Hayashi 1981

magic shopping cart creature dream

July 22, 2016 No Comments

What a marvelous happy dream, exceedingly strange.

We were derelicts, living in alleys, abandoned buildings, each with different abilities. One of the things I could do was ride my stainless steel shopping cart. I’d sit or lay or stand on it and glide silently through the alley, up and down stairs, moving it with my mind. We were happy, and gentle if left alone. No one saw us because we were bums. But two normal crept in and tried to take us. I flung myself headfirst through the air down the stairs and in flight twisted around and gutted one of the bad guys with my fingers, faster than one could see I sliced his abdomen open in three flaps and emptied his insides in a second. I didn’t turn him into a creature, just a corpse. There was so much more but as I woke from excitement to get up to write it down, Mandy Cat lay on my belly and I stayed there for her purr knowing her happiness was more important than the dream details, and when she did get down from the bed, she vomited so we had to clean it up and more of the dream was lost. But each of us had different abilities, we were all friends, friendly, gentle, happy, we’d sing silently in comradeship, be of one mind. Everything was dark, the clothes old, the coats long, scraggly, but dirt wasn’t a factor because we were part of everything in collaboration, enjoyed gliding through the city lights at night. And I was sooooo happy, the dream was happy, my fellow creatures were happy, everything was perfect, as it should be, one with reality, but 90% of the dream is gone, but I’m left with a happy glow I hold to me like a warm hug.

So now it’s 4:30, been up an hour sitting in dark with pen and flashlight catching what I can, tingling with happy.

This is what happens when I go two weeks without smoking. Grass erases my dreams when I wake. Not smoking because of money troubles, but it’s worth it for dreams like this, these dreams are my night treasures.

– Smith, 7.22.2016

Lady Poem 6/4/2016

June 4, 2016 No Comments

Tracery

Beyond the failed utopia
the witch of the high wind
lifted up her hem

Loosed genies spilled fractals
sitars traced the cosmic mandala
and adults admitted memories
of dragon realms

Horns sauntered horses
from choruses of island muses
to the polyrhythmic noodles
and multiple loaming shadows
of ethiopian jazz

~ Lady