“Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.” ~ Emily Dickinson

“Violette Sonne” (1962, oil on waxed paper laid on board)
by Max Ernst

                   

Two for Tuesday: Dreams and Elegies

“Sea and Clouds” (nd)
by August Hagborg

Lacandons

In the forest of Chiapas, in thatched huts without walls, in hammocks barely rocking, they sleep.
There it is said:
If you dream of a donkey, there will be a strong wind.
If you dreams of tacos, you will see an anteater.
If you dream of an anteater, people are coming.
If you dream of a termite, you will see a jaguar.
If you dream of a jaguar, people are coming.
If the jaguar bites you, they are not people.
If you dream you are waking, you’ll be frightened in the forest.
If you dream of a mirror, you will see white stones.
If you dream of your tongue, beware.
All birds mean fever; all fish mean pain in your stomach.
If you dream you’re worrying about the cost of things, you’ll not have to worry about the cost of things.
If you dream of a party, for a long time you’ll be bored
A gourd is a jaguar’s head; the old canoe an alligator.
If you dream of a house, you’ll see a wild boar.
If you dream of a beard, you’ll see a wild boar.
If you dream of a broom, you’ll see a wild boar.
If you dream of a radio, you’ll see a wild boar.
If you dream of a poet, someone will cry.
A shotgun is the tooth of an animal.
Beans are maggots and maggots are beans,
If you dream you are writing, you’ll be bitten by a snake.
If you dream of a lake, it is nothing.
If you dream of a frog, it is nothing.
If you dream of a flower, it is nothing.
If you dream of heaven, it is nothing.
If you dream of leaves, it is nothing, but if the leaves are shaking in the wind, grasshoppers will eat the corn.
If you dream of fog, people are coming who are sad and ill.
If you dream you know something, you do not know it.
If you dream of a halo around the moon, the end of the world is coming.
That which is thin in a dream will be thick.
That which is certain in a dream won’t happen.

~ Eliot Weinberger

“Wave” (1968, oil and mixed media collage on canvas)
by Michael Ayrton

                   

Elegies

               amy winehouse

 

All song is formal, and you

Maybe felt this and decided

You’d be formal too. (The eyeliner, the beehive: formal.)

When a desire to escape becomes formal,

It’s dangerous. Then escape requires

Nullity, rather than a walk in the park or a movie.

Eventually, nullity gets harder and

Harder to achieve. After surgery, I had

Opiates. I pushed the button as often as I could.

Understood by music was how I felt. An escape

So complete it became a song. After that,

Elegy’s the only necessary form.

 

               steve jobs

 

Say you lost all your money, or turned against your ambition.

Then you would be at peace, or

Else why does the mind punish the body?

Vengeance is mind, says the body.

Ever after, you’re a mirror, “silver and exact.”

Just like the bug in a string of code, the body defies the mind

Or looks in the mirror of the mind and shudders.

Better instruments are better because they’re

Silverish but intact.

 

               troy davis

 

The clock is obdurate,

Random, and definite.

Obdurate the calendar.

You thump on the cot: another signature.

Did it didn’t do it would do it again.

And if a deferred dream dies? Please sign the petition.

Very good. Let’s hunt for a pen.

If you thump, there’s another signature and

Signatures are given freely by the signer’s hand.

 

               lucian freud

 

Lingering over

Unlovely bodies,

Couldn’t help

Intuitively rendering

A whole

Nother angel.

Facts are

Relics — an

Effect worth

Undertaking: yes,

Dear daylight?

 

               donna summer

 

Discourse that night concerned the warm-blooded love we felt.

On the divan and in the ballroom and on the terrace, we felt it.

Now virtue meant liking the look of the face we lay next to.

Never mind the sting of the winter solstice.

All discourse that night concerned the warm-blooded love we felt.

Something lifted us higher. Her little finger told her so,

Untangling, with careless skill, the flora of the sexual grove.

Master physician with a masterly joy in wrapping up

Mud-spattered, coke-dusted wounds at midnight, when it’s too

Early to stop dancing and go home. Our lily-minds soothed by her

Royalty concealed in the synthesizers in the flora of the sexual grove.

 

~ Kathleen Ossip

                   

Music by Paper Kites, “Gates”

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