factory on an iceberg

Over the weekend, I had four dreams.

In the first dream, I wasn’t liked.

Get out of Vietnam, white man,

seek your answers on the ocean floor.

We’re all attractive, yeah, you’re wasted.

You wrote the book, ‘Interminable Malaise’,

but I remember the first title, ‘Interminable Malnoia’,

you pretentious fool.  you have a purple bathrobe

and a hospital shuffle in your near future.

IV drip-drip-drip for you, Crazy Seagull.

that’s right, the wicker is out to get you.

your needle’s on bright orange E,

toe-tagged and unclaimed. protocol:

we’re Good Willing your disaster movie DVDs.

In the second dream, I wasn’t needed.

Are you having a heart attack?

Only your junk mail knows the answer.

Your workspace’s operating system

runs like Rocky Balboa’s Great Chicken Chase.

Can someone forward you the approved text?

We’re switching to Keurigs –

Salem’s Lot for your coffeepot. The eagle in the

aerie buries its beak. I forgot – you’re a vulture.

March down to Human Resources

and cluck your grievances:

box it – binge it – catapult it.

Believe me, brother: the carrion will carry on.

In the third dream, they were chasing me.

Lunatic or lullaby, you don’t belong.

Every person who has tried to kill you

has killed you. Again and again and awash.

Compassion is a muffled prisoner

in the dark entrapment of lowest earth.

You can’t forget her – she follows you,

a Golem of hollowest truth, dead-leaf encrusted.

Suddenly, Death has all the Time in the World,

since the hourglass was picked from your pocket by

all Archetypes, all Stereotypes, all Monograms.

keep walking; the trap door will take your confession.

Hail Mary, Fall on your Face.

in the fourth dream, I was out of time.

You need to see McQueen’s last movie, “The Hunter”.

He’s gaunt and he’s a runaway train.  Onward to Mexico,

onward, pardner, lightly. lightly. so lightly. the girls

loved you as the mirror crack’d: the way the

flickering light alternately heated and cooled your

naked body on the mattress – you looked like an

uncooked sausage with a Macbeth hangover.

stop seriousing yourself; I never promised you

a chapbook. Titanic killed the dinosaurs. One painful

Octoberish January didn’t help, either.  Goddamnit,

you stained the sheets. (finally, a powerful voice says)

please return my gun.

Alarm clock. Half-static, half-“Two Tickets to Paradise”.

(blur disappears in a-minute-thirty…a-minute-twenty-nine…

a-minute-twenty-eight…a-minute-twenty-seven…)

The Internet said they saved the Gay Head Whitehouse

in Aquinnah, Mass., moving it inland 180 feet from the

Cliff’s Eroding Face.

I replaced the shower curtain liner in the bathroom and

stared through the window at the neighbor’s car’s headlights.

I re-counted my seventy-three Wawa coupons for a

“FREE Any Size Self-Serve Hot Beverage or Fountain Drink”,

activated via code when I complete the online surveys.

I completed fifty-nine online surveys,

laughing like a maniac.

until my wife told me she heard something

in the walls, 

the mice typing screenplays, I replied.

the cellphone vibrates another wrong number,

another misdial into my dream chaos;

I wept as I drove to Wawa.