Have you ever wondered how you really know when you're awake and when you're
asleep? You think you know, until you wake up.
That's the moment of truth. Ponde
red by Descartes in
the trenches like Dali
decorating my land
scape of badly drawn night-
time: examining existence in
concentric thought experiments
each circle
winding
farther down
the spiral. Like one of
those coin
catchers, black
hole in the center, spinning
nickel wildly orbiting silver
plunging through to the other
side - perhaps
another universe, another dime
nsion, an
other time and place
with a simple
plink.
Several dollars' worth of travellers, never heard from again.
*
The highway rolled past. Night, spread t h i n l y,
clouds of rubber putty erasers smudging away the Indian
Ink: street lamps flaring snowflakestars,
brief supernovas, while sprinkling rain dotted my wind
shield just enough to streak it if I turned on the wiper
blades.
I drove with the windows down,
sixty,
seventy,
e i g h t y
m per h
our every scrap of paper or nap
kin or plastic grocer
y bag caught, slammed from
side to side
in my car like a wrestling arena,
hurled out the wind
ow and sucked
into the outer space vacuum
I was flying through.
My eyes lost their focus time and
again the leather of the steering wheel felt sticky to my palms, so I tried letting
go
she gasped.
If you stick
your hand out the wind
ow at 70, rain
drops are a hypo
prick, at 80 a
knife stab, at 90
a rifle
shot.
*
e,
s
o
The road r f
e
l
l, wound
side to side, a
writhing snake, revealed flashing multi-
color lights on the shoulder up ahead.
Winking and twinkling for all
the world like one of those flashy
toys that kids scream for at the
circus, like this officer had bought a huge
one and had it installed atop his
car.
A glimpse - the young man's
face who'd been pulled over,
pale in my headlights, eyes
wide, and in slow motion I saw the
cop turn his head to watch me
speeding past - and I knew he
couldn't get in his car fast
enough to catch me, he was
busy, he knew it, I knew it, and
I felt the accelerator easing
farther down, and then they were
past.
It sounded
so loud outside, so
quiet in the car, I
wanted to turn it
up, twist the volume
knob, drown out the
sound, the noise, the
silence, which vibrated
the doors and rattled my teeth and screamed and cried and begged for all of it to just -
Stop.
a
wake.
*
Not every pinch is successful, nor every dream so easily shaken off.
Not every nightmare runs a
way at the mom
ent you
stare it in the face and say
This is just a dream, and I know it.
I am in control. Get the hell
away from me, because this is
MY
dream, and I can wake
up any time
I
please
And the demons laugh,
and the shadows grow larger,
because you were never real
ly in control to beg
in with.
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