The supreme mystery which we learn after death is that the cosmos with all its galaxies is a blue drop...
CAUTION: HIPPIE DIPPIE
Hurry to the station to catch the train--or is it a sky tram? a ship? a hill? an island?
Climb its flank, but fissures open--it breaks up. I'm adrift. Next day, on TV...
In a museum, I absent-mindedly eat crumbly bricks I think are pastry; they really are rare soil-samples...
Three days later, I see a TV show I thought was on children. Wrong; it's on soil samples--that turn into eatables...
Nabokov's uncle left him a fortune but the Revolution took it. He dreamed his uncle said "I shall return to you as
Harry & Kuvyrkin." 40 years later filmmakers Harris & Kubrick paid Nabokov a fortune for the rights to Lolita...
Khodasevich (1939): I dreamt a call announced my friend was dead. Really he was still alive--but not for long...
Sergey (1945): My brother died in January but the news took months to reach us. Just before it did, I dreamed...
Half awake, Nabokov interprets shadows as guillotines and believes he and his wife will be executed...
A second me punches me in the breast. I fight back, yelling
"Bad Nancy! Bad Nancy!" Five months later I find a malignancy...
The Mummy chases me, then unwraps his bandages to show the mutilated face of my boyfriend.
"I'm getting out of jail!" he says. Then the phone wakes me. My boyfriend. He says "I'm getting out of..."
CAUTION: CODEPENDENCE, MUTILATION, GUILT AND GRIEF
As a child, landscape artist Paul Nash dreamed of flying over the countryside
of southern England. But he was threatened by the legendary Black Dog...
As a child, Paul Nash dreamt he flew over rural southern England.
As an adult surrealist painter...
We save a mouse from a man who claims he eats them. Later I dream I am the mouse...
Natalius dreamed that angels whipped him for joining a heretic cult, and woke to find welts on his back...
Nebuchadnezzar dreams a voice from heaven commands a great tree be cut;
Daniel interprets this as a prediction the king will go mad for 7 years...
DAY: I write, exploring my jealousy toward my wife, though I know she's not cheating on me.
DREAM: Doctors remove my spleen and wake it up! Now my spleen is out to do me in...
I wished I could kiss my son farewell. That week, Ethel called. "I dreamed Ned kissed you, not me!
I was hurt. He laughed like anything and kissed me too..."
I realize the artichoke plate in my lap is a pun: ART! I CHOKE! I need to peel
off my thorny outer leaves of professionalism to find the heart inside...
Boating, we land on a cape and find a house with a Rembrandt on the wall--Bathsheba
holding a letter from David her lover, pregnant with thoughts as well as child...
CAUTION: NUDE SKETCH
My little son accidentally tears the tail off our goldfish. The wound
looks vaginal. The fish, moaning in pain, turns into my daughter...
On my 45th birthday, at the end of my eight-year dream-art project, I dream of a women's rite
turning scraps of chewed flesh into a whole fish I offer to the fishbowl in the heart of the Vatican...
I catch a magical fish and let it go. A friend and I consider higher learning--and we don't mean academia.
My friend lays a lotus in a chair on the beach. A man baptises in sunset water, shining like a certain fish...
Morocco. Horseback mercenaries attack a town. A boy says "Take their lifestyle, and you must remove their brains."
A protective Hand of Fatima dissolves, leaving a finger, a feather, a... vagina. "What a slit!" We burst into laughter...
A stopped-up mystical toilet gets cleared by an unexpectedly colorful tool;
but then, you never anticipate what'll unplug your, um, "head"...
Night. A massive crash on the highway. Bodies strewn. Sickened, I descend a spiral stair to the Pool
of Truth. It gives no answers. Women spout platitudes. I go on, in pain, down past the polar bears...
CAUTION: THE DEAD
I meet a Mormon art-educator I know. We're so different! Then I get a call
from India. My friend tells of an erotic Hindu bas-relief of women and snakes...
Intimidated by stylish friends, I split in three--myself, and a small child
nursing at the breast of an earth-mother priestess--or Earth herself...
I face a barrage of deadly challenges out of every action film I've seen and every game I've ever played...
An actor-manager type is putting on Hamlet, and he offers me a role;
I'm breathless, my chance has come at last! He'd like me to play...
After murdering his mother, Nero dreams he's losing control: ships drift, statues chase him, and his own tomb says...
In a world where ice contracts & sinks, birds freeze in winter, thaw in spring. But one swan knows better......
Can dreams have taste and smell, I wonder? That night my dreams set out to show me...
I dreamt of the Du Pont lab where I'd work, and my neighbor's future coffin,
and the hospital where my sister-in-law would get a transfusion...
I dreamed I was one of several soldiers about to be executed. I told my girlfriend the dream.
She asked "What were you wearing?" and I burst out laughing as I saw the pun: "Fatigues!"
I was in front of the gods on Mt Olympus or in Valhalla. I was scared,
but swore an oath to follow my passions and no longer play it safe...
Will and El each dreamed of gold buried under a walnut tree near Tulpehocken. They didn't talk about it, just
walked up there and dug. They never said how much they found, but they were rich for the rest of their lives...
At a party, Nietzsche told a young woman "my hand was transparent as glass;
and a fat toad sat on my hand. I felt compelled to swallow it, and did..."
CAUTION: CREEPY DREAM, CREEPY FOLLOW-UP
I die. But then I find a door in my grandmother's pantry leading to a beautiful library...
I ask how my relationship with Scott was going. That night he asks me to sail on the Titanic. I say
"That ship will sink!" but he won't listen. I see a skeleton-baby and know I have even more to lose...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE, UNFIT DAD, ABORTION
While rehearsing our circus act I mentally saw Nina's ladder breaking loose.
Next day, a supporting ring snapped. Being forewarned, I pulled hard...
SITUATION: I was attracted to my prospective therapist. I asked my dreams what to do...
DREAM: His wife vanishes. We get in bed. I feel such love I ignore how tiny his penis is...
AFTER: In the morning, I decide I'd be wise to work with a different therapist...
CAUTION: SEX
Pete told me to skip the shortcut. Only after I'd turned the truck around did I realize Pete had died weeks ago...
1: I visit Elrond and Bilbo in Elvenhome, but overthinking traps me in a timeloop;
2: Elrond says he renounces seriousness for joy, and plans a great, inclusive party;
3: I feel unworthy, but set out on a desert quest with Elrond's young apprentice;
4: I meet joyful, drunken, singing elves but hide in a tree, too shy to join in;
5: I meet a nervous elven singer and a dolphin trapped in a tiny pool in my bedroom...
I dreamed I was a blond guy tracking down an elf who lived in a trailer park. She'd gone mad; elves trapped
in the human world mostly do. Awake, I sketched her, then saw she's a lot like my younger self! Disturbing...
My body is a residential tower sheltering centipedes, basilisks, dragonflies, bagworms,
skeletal cranes; without my blood's heat and the moist caverns of my soul they would die...
Lynn's changed. She everything I'm not--playful, colorful, free with her money.
She finds the coolest stuff. Why can't I find all that Lynn has?...
My mom's driving me to work. A nearby car has young people in it--I'd rather be with them.
My mom seems to be dawdling; I'll be late meeting my colleague! I'm furious...
Touring an underground maze, I meet a woman I like. But her brother bristles.
Then, from a height, I see the ventilation pits of the labyrinth laid out like a map.
The Japanese invade! Hide in the jungle. Women in rags butcher centipedes & mice...
CAUTION: UNHAPPY MEALS; OVER-JUNGIANISM
After fasting for six days, I dreamed of three spirit helpers who aided my village,
guiding hunters toward game and healing others. But I lost so many loved ones...
CAUTION: SPOUSE MURDERED; CAREER BURNOUT
I dreamed my late stepdad warned me to stand by my mom--she'd be in trouble soon--gossip & blame...
I had gone blind in one eye. I dreamt our Savior came to me, and when I woke, I could see...
I'm very pregnant and feel bloated. My mom says "That's what you get for not using a condom"...
Despite corporate crooks, missiles and floods, Angelina Jolie and I find the lock of mermaid hair...
War, monsters, plague and bombs are just thrills spicing up
this city rising from a tropical sea on an alien world...
The white horse, Earth, ambles on between the stars, and then unfolds into a swan...
An alien is taking over our world, and I feel so helpless that even when I wake I want to just forget the dream...
I try hard not to invade Margaret Mead's privacy, but I need her advice;
after I find a fruit true growing in a forgotten room, she unbends...
I stumble into a bar where the TV stars from my childhood are
drunkenly arguing metaphysics--Howdy Doody, Beany & Cecil, Flipper...
I helped my aunt and uncle move upstairs from their rented downstairs flat. Absurd! They own a one-story house they love...
I dream World War Two's begun. I always felt war was just rivalry between ruling elites, but now I find
I'll even back Imperial Britain against the Nazis. The next day, Hitler and Stalin announce a pact...
CAUTION: GRIM TIME FOR IDEALISTS
The moon rises from my friend's body, and sinks into mine. Then
a great tree grows from my body, covering much of the world...
CAUTION: ORAL TRADITION AT BEST
I DREAM: I'm at the scene of a fatal car crash. They thought it was Johnny Carson, but it's his brother Dick.
I WAKE: On the news: Johnny Carson's son Dick died in a car crash. The scene looks like my dream...
CAUTION: WILL TROUBLE E.S.P. SKEPTICS
I lie on the bottom of the pool. The life guard lifts me in his strong arms. We flirt till my legs fuse, ready to go deep;
but he says "It's only a part-time job" and turns away. In day, the highschool pool lies empty, widowed of water...
I dreamed our physician said our son had diphtheria. When I woke, we found only a tiny
white spot in his throat. But by the time the doctor arrived...
A crow offers me a ride. I hang on tight and he flies me up into a beech tree where lots of other crows
perch and talk. Then he flies me to another tree and leaves me. I think "How am I gonna get down?"...
Three men chase me. I can't get away so I turn and fight, and put out one guy's eye. That makes them pause!
At last they back away. As they paddle away in a boat, I realize who they are: Muskrat, Otter and Mink...
CAUTION: ANTHROPOLOGISTS!
As a Hillsborough child I never heard the crash of twentynine
walled streets that fell with a force that moved us away...
A toy's delivered, unasked. A jumping jack. It tries to eat me! I defeat it but then peer in the box to be sure...
DREAM: Millions of birds were at war, tearing one another apart. It was out of control, thousands and thousands...
DAY: Pinochet's coup took Chile. Alerted by the dream, Painemal went into hiding and lived--unlike thousands...
CAUTION: EXTRAPOLATIVE OR PSYCHIC?
When I was very small I dreamt a pack of wolves climbed the tree outside my window and
somehow got it open. Freud told me I must have seen my parents having sex doggy style...
CAUTION: REALLY, DR. FREUD?
(plus a 2018/8/31 dream by Wayan provoked by Panter's dream art)
Rather than a dream narrative, this is a tour through Gary's common dreamscapes--
forgotten places, empty streets. Or ones you wish were empty...
Giant snakes chased me. I go lucid, turn & slay one. As I woke, the snakes cried. So I re-entered...
CAUTION: SNAKES, BEHEADING, REHEADING
Parkinson dreamed his new telephone device got added to an anti-aircraft gun. He told his dream;
guns with M9 units turned out to be so accurate it gave the British hope against the Luftwaffe...
In occupied Germany, Pat flags down two friends just before a truck crash. Except...
Pat was in England at the time. She sensed they were in danger, but...
An owl flew at me, and I fused with it. The next thing I knew, I was a redtail hawk...
Tossing out old papers, I find a dream about crows who
whack pigeons with baseball bats, ending with this moral...
Closer I edge to admire their scales, the glint of their teeth, and shape of their tails. They cast a strong spell...
Dreamwork takes discipline, but writing and painting dreams for others takes even more: courage!
Patagia dreams she fakes a Hindu rite, causing Electra to dream she fakes leadership in a refugee band. But are they faking?
I'm a brown sparrow scratching in the dirt, looking for bugs. Focused, tireless, I hunt and peck...
Out of a Campbell's soup can poured life force: someone's last breath...
Lions trap me in an African cave with only coffee, paper and pens! Is this what it takes to get me to write?
I visited my friend Chris Wayan's workshop and found him building
a dance troupe of joyfully obscene centaurs out of Barbie dolls...
My friend and I are banana slugs on the forest floor. We wander out into chaparral, and across a bike path...
I dream I'm trying to understand how I write poetry, but then I recall my daughter's sick
from a bad prescription. So I try to research her illness, but our library's renovating...
A woman I had wronged set her pit bull on me! Hand in its jaws, I gave in, and we both began crying...
Sharks unicorns and moonbeams / Lost loves and karma chocolate I-beams
Raw telepathic bundles of beans / Write a little dream with me...
I was downtown when I knew I had to hurry home. I found it full of gas.
As my husband napped, our two-year-old had turned on all the stove jets...
I paint my thumb with bitter aloes to break my habit of sucking it at night. I dream of
wormwood, ox gall, mineral salts. I consult Dr. Save Me and even the Pope, but...
I'm in the Rocky Mountains. Gold-hungry Mexican bandits capture me and put my feet to the fire,
demanding "How do you transmute copper into gold?" I scream "I don't know!", waking to find...
CAUTION: TORTURE PLAYED FOR LAUGHS
She dreamt Death attacked her but her youngest kids bravely fought back--and died. 3 months later...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
Fat Max eats with Heinrich the guard on Tuesdays. He talks too much. You and I are hungry. Tonight...
The poem appeared in the dream as it appears on the page--words, even punctuation...
CAUTION: DEATH CAMP, DEATH PLOT
DAY: I'm preparing a report on our industry; but the numbers seem a bit odd.
DREAM: Someone points out a big inventory generated no sales or income.
NEXT DAY: Awake, I hunt for evidence the inventory's real. And find...
I dreamt an eagle slaughtered my twenty geese. I wept until he spoke to me: "Take heart! I am thy husband..."
I dreamt, and knew I dreamt, and I made love to Lady Castlemayne, and had all my desire.
If, as Shakespeere said, death is but sleep, and dreams may come, why then fear death?...
Samuel Pepys dreamt of kidneystones, pee, come, & snot--or did he? Thomas Macauley dreams his niece confesses...
I am arrested in Tunisia, essentially for being Jewish, despite my pro-Palestinian sympathies.
My main regret: I face years of dirty socks...
The top of my skull pops off, exposing my vulnerable brain. But I replace it. Later, I crush a spider...
Mobilization, war, troop transport, slogans, marching bands and orgies, all in an apotheosis of dough...
CAUTION: ENDS IN SEX
I'm on vacation, but cultists lick my feet--then turn on me, casting stones. But they miss.
So I wander the steppe for centuries, until I come to the City of Texas...
1941. My dad and I are denounced to the SS. We're put in with monsters; I'm a snake or fish myself.
But the Nazis become a photo album, I go to a memorial, I cry, it's 1947, peace...
CAUTION: HOLOCAUST MEMORIES
Dream of a breakup I see coming but can't prevent, and the devastation it works on my lover...
Parking structures with spiral ramps are, secretly, screws harvesting motion from parking cars, slowly drilling
into near-impenetrable rock. Thus are skyscraper-foundations made...
I learn my book A Void, supposedly written without the letter E, has lots of them--
crawling with errors. But at least I can spy on the neighbors...
I am dreaming. She's beside me. I tell myself I'm dreaming. I wake. She really is beside me. Delirious joy. I embrace her. I wake...
Someone's broken in, prowling my apartment. Man or woman? The scent gives her away.
I wake, calling aloud "What is it?" Moments later, C. knocks on my door...
I'm in a play. Fear, then joyful sex, then ranching, then silly hats, as a man drones on about
class struggle. Weird chairs, pingpong, coffee, impossible double utterances. At last
I tell friends my dream--backwards. Then I write the dream down on slices of cheese...
CAUTION: SEX ONSTAGE
A stone bridge, at the crossing of a road and a river. A signal sign indicates the name of the place: (YOU)...
I go home. Our cat is there. And a small, striped new cat. Then I step on a third, much bigger cat.
This is just one cat too many! "This cat's not real!" I say...
The nonexistent cat leaps up and scratches my face.
I murder my wife. I try to sell her body as meat to a firm that'll turn her into wine.
But the transubstantiation has already happened, and the paperwork's undone...
CAUTION: GRISLY
Facing death the next day in a Roman arena, Perpetua dreams of the spiritual duel behind the physical one...
God issued me a paper bag to go over my head & protect my eyes
when facing him--at first. But as I advanced spiritually, I tore...
Joseph as a teen dreams sheaves of his brothers' grain bow to his; then the sun, moon & stars bow to him.
Eleven years later, in prison, Joseph interprets two cellmates' dreams as premonitory, and gets both right.
Two years later, he interprets two bizarre dreams troubling the Pharaoh, thus saving Egypt from famine...
CAUTION: BRONZE AGE FUN! NEAR-FRATRICIDE, SLAVERY, EXECUTION, FORCED MARRIAGE...
I had a heart attack--but it faded in minutes! The phone rang. I knew at once my dying mother was gone...
She dreamed she'd written a wise and beautiful poem. Half asleep she scribbled it down. Awake, she found...
CAUTION: HOGGEREL
Superimposed photos and movie stills show my typical lucid dreaming--I look at my hands,
realize I'm dreaming, dance for joy, meet a guide, fly to strange places--best of all, Egypt...
I was led into the future, where all the buffalo disappeared, to meet a frail old man by a ranch house...
I sought a dream of Helpers. But rather than give me gifts, they gave me a daunting challenge...
Thieves stole 100 of our horses. The tracks suggested white men, but that night
my dream Helpers declared them Sioux. We tracked them across Montana...
Two boys dream robed figures climb in the window to cut their hair--and find, awake, someone has. While Pliny...
I free a friend unjustly imprisoned. On the run, we encounter our Life Paintings. Mine is a beautiful pegasus flying. But on its back is a monkey in a red suit...
I meet a man in a box. A mob wants to attack him. But five white horses defend him! Well, one's really a unicorn. I know each horse is a talent, but only recall one when I wake: clairvoyance...
A great quake and fire devastate Athens; I'm up on the
Acropolis, as the stone columns of the Parthenon fall...
FERRY: the crossing is rough, but I'm warned I must find my own sea-legs...
BUZZ OFF: I step into a family photo, but I'm not welcome in the past...
Helping out talking animals until I'm exhausted, I suffer a fatal accident. What am I being warned of?
Our gods demand sacrifices. I let Mother mutilate me so I'd be unfit. But the priests turn out to be blind...
CAUTION: YOU CAN FEEL PAIN IN DREAMS
The scenery's so lovely my mother walks off a cliff! As I wake, a neighbor falls out a high window...
Troutmet the moon-pigeon, Burtra the blackbird, a talking acacia,
my dead father and my dead gardener all give me afterlife-advice...
I meet a girl who's 16 and 61, who tells me dreams are lives, not messages.
But then I must fly over a sinister parade...
A staring Eye tries to break me; his cats & robots flay me. Yet his birds rebel in sympathy, & I refuse to die...
A bug with a horse-skull face reappears all through this nightmare of betrayal. I only know I feared it...
I'm a film actress, but the producer isn't happy with my legs, so make-up takes them away to be redone...
I'm one of four mediocrities: all our efforts come to nought. Mum says "You're netted, but you can fray the ropes...
A dying colleague haunts me all night. He says "crossings are often unpleasant" but death's not bad...
I live as a small falcon, glad I'm no longer human. But when that life ends...
A bewildering dream of a boy's borrowed bath, absconding renters' furniture and fly-eating turns real a few weeks later...
Snakebite! I'm hooked to a health-monitor. If a red light comes on, I'm doomed. But voices start whispering...
I don't love my husband, so I'm stranded in the hotel between life & death, from which...
A writer I haven't seen for 40 years gives me a drink, but all I want is to find my mom in The Other Room...
I'm in my home town, but at two times at once! Murderous boys explain why: I died here in 1861...
Lost in the snow, I must give my baby to a stranger or let my dad put him in a box, safe, forever...
Numb, sunk in a trance, I only woke when I broke through a wall to light and magical birdsong...
I dream the actors auditioning for George Bernard Shaw’s play are blends of human, avian, and lion.
Next morning I find a card from Shaw asking if I'd fancy playing a lion in his...
On the road with a poet and a philosopher, I insist we rescue an owl.
But we get lost, and the poet turns into...
(A comic frustration dream hiding a warning)
Our tennis game's spoiled by rubber rackets, fierce grandmas,
Good and Evil (those identical twins) and a bully on stilts...
I'm carried off by a crane to meet birdfish, singing sheep, fell-spirits, mad shopkeepers and devil-bulls...
Lost in an industrial maze, my memories hopelessly outdated, I resign myself to the Wheel...
I have a long chat with two songbirds. Next I'm a parrot, living in rainforest. Then the mail comes...
As I tour an English estate, wrinkled green elephantine creatures 20' tall peer at me through huge spectacles.
I'm told "they're only kept now for their singing." I want to hear, but my guide's bored; I let her drag me off...
CAUTION: CONFORMITY STIFLES SHAMANISM
As a boy I dreamt my uncle (a calm man) glared at me in red rage; I was terrified. A decade later, in a bar...
I dreamt I saw, over a balcony rail, bright-colored, spectacular scenery. Years after in Arizona, I took a detour...
I was working in the library, talking to this woman who announced "I think I'll grow my horn now..."
DREAM: a thirtyish blonde says her death is ordered. Her head's cut off. But it won't die--bites his hand!
Dr. Prince feels the dream shouts "premonition!" and writes an account at the Society for Psychical Research.
Next night, a thirtyish blonde nearby commits suicide, leaving a note saying her severed head will live on...
CAUTION: CREEPY DREAM, CREEPIER NEWS
I made my way through a great crowd to find my husband lying dead behind velvet curtains. Two years later...
Traders were vanishing. Newly installed Viceroy Zhu fasted, focused, and dreamt
the gods sent him a riddling poem. Each line suggested one word--together, they...
CAUTION: BRUTAL ORGANIZED CRIME
A farmer dreamt his new cow grew wings and flew away. Next day, he sold that cow at a heavy loss. Walking
home with the cash, he found a tame falcon, and tied its leg to his moneybag. One guess what the bird did...
As locusts advanced on his farm district, a magistrate dreamt a Mr. Willow had advice.
He took it. Bearing a gift of rice wine, he sought out the Goddess of the Locusts, and...
Dou dreams he marries Lily; when a monstrous snake attacks her huge family, he reluctantly hosts
them all... when he wakes, they turn out to be bees driven from their hive by a (very real) snake...
Mr Bai dreams his son the mandarin is a tiger leading a pack of wolves--all man-eaters,
at least until two angels knock out his fangs and predict he'll get beheaded soon...
CAUTION: CANNIBALS, REVENGE KILLINGS
I realize a bone is protruding between my left armpit and breast. I put Maria's hand on my breast and
ask her to feel the bone. But no one grasps what it really is--something sticking out from my heart...
I'm a fox-woman. A human man courts me--insultingly. I dream my brain grows till my head hurts,
till it splits open, till light gets in. I rant at the last dragon. Strange but kindly, he gives me a picnic...
I dream my autistic son, miraculously high-functioning, recites a math-poem to a crowd...
Then I become cartoon cat Madam Purr-Say and chant my own defiant poem at the dream gods...
CAUTION: FIRST POEM AUTISTIC, SECOND PISSY
Subtitled "In his Sleep he Saw Love, Glory and Wealth Appear to him". Is it a real pre-Freudian dream
on being tempted by three powerful allies of the Id... or just allegory? I have my doubts...
A timewarp started to swallow my house. It looked normal outside, but everyone inside was in a trance...
I'm pulling a cart in the woods. At a bridge over a canyon, owls urge me to climb down into the misty abyss, but...
Inside a Renaissance reliquary, I see a dried-up head--but is it St. Sixtus really? Weeks later...
I dream I'm in a cafe joking with my mom's ghost. I say "If you meet a guy called St. Sixtus, tell him..."
CAUTION: READ THE TITLE
Qu'lad, dying of flu in the pandemic, dreamt a wolf told him cold-water baths would save him. He staggered to the river. He lived. He told others.
They lived. The shaman Togumalis dreamt his spirit helper, a squirrel, prescribed the same. A century later, hospital records show why it worked...
CAUTION: ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE SHOWN AS SUPERIOR
I dreamed at least weekly I had to view a slide showing something wrong with my fetus.
I assumed the dreams expressed doubts about motherhood--until my miscarriage...
twin dreams predicting their children and nation will prosper.
Ragnhild sees a lovely tree rooted in her pain and blood;
Halfdan sleeps with pigs and dreams he has a great head of hair...
CAUTION: KIDNAPPING, ARSON, GENERAL BARBARISM (check the date!)
Colorful birds swirl round me. They may be natives of Paradise--may be, in fact, avian angels...
Holding a luminous crystal sword, I enter a crypt where a king lies--ill, not dead.
An old woman wants to punish him, but as he stirs, I sheathe my sword...
I dreamt I was given verbena sprigs--from my mother, I'm told. But am I me, Persephone, or all the daughters given love by all the mothers?
I walked a vast rose garden, but all were Ophelia's yellow blooms of love forsaken; not one was the color of love's true flower...
Giant presences; rock, hill and crag are aspects worn. Shape-shifters they are; each in as many forms as eyes behold...
In Ireland, in Yeats's stone tower, he leads me up the spiral stair toward a thyme-scented portal...
Last night I seemed in your embrace; you were about to die.
Today I wake into my place: you immortal, I...
I roamed the mansion of the dead, my heart athrob with terror, lest
I see faces, not human, that once shone on me with familiar love...
A voice calls to me by name--but not the name I now bear, evoking memories of another life...
In my dream I walk through golden glowing woods; I wake to a soggy London November...
I tossed the crystal decanter of my self into the river, and watched it float away...
I set out in a dream / To go away / Away is hard to go, but no one / Asked me to stay...
A voice tells me I have 100 months to live. I vow it'll be enough to finish my work here...
CAUTION: THAT VOICE WAS WRONG
I saw a red screen, as if formed by flowing blood. On it, a hand wrote elliptical integrals.
I knew they were from Lakshmi. As soon as I woke, I committed them to writing...
I dream I'm at a center for bull fighting, teaching the structure of the brain, but
they believe the brain is a structureless gelatin and the soul is all...
I dream I'm ranting about the structure of the mind, postulating four layers--odd, since
I think dreams are meaningless--just neurons getting some exercise! So whence this theory?
CAUTION: JARGON
Doctors remove my upper skull and sew my scalp over my brain.
I can get around, if I stay upright, but I'm terribly vulnerable...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE REFLECTS REALITY
I dream I'm teaching my students that those willing to let evidence change their minds are rare.
Climbers seek fame and status, while iconoclasts seek to upset order without regard for truth...
CAUTION: SOBERING FROM A NOBEL PRIZE WINNER
There is a war between liberals and reactionaries, but the dream makes no
sense: friends claim to be hit, to be wounded, but I see no bodies, no blood...
CAUTION: ANTICIPATES THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
I face two gunmen fleeing an invasion of dragons I support--since inside I'm a dragon. But I won't hurt them. Why?
Winged things lurk in the shadows. When I focus on them, they attack! Castaneda's teacher watches amused...
By a lake I've seen in many dreams, four dragons attack. I become one too, and duel them in mid-air...
The older sorceress I'm in bed with plans to marry me off to a younger woman, but I distract her with my tongue...
CAUTION: BEDROOM HUMOR
I fled a snake by flying. I felt guilty, I knew it was cheating. Years passed. I made tiny clay figurines.
Years passed. I drew a chicken lady with a halo. Years passed. I sculpted a flock of BIG...
CAUTION: NUDE CHICKEN LADIES
My girlfriend Raven dreams I keep poking her awake,
while I dream that a giant raven gives me weird advice...
I watched her dive into the lake... and fail to come up. Her golden cloak
floated on the water. I hesitated just a moment, and...
I burst into tears for no reason and for 15 minutes begged my brother-in-law not to go, then said...
CAUTION: GRUESOME
The jewels in the hoard had strange powers, but the advice of the dragon guarding them was even stranger...
I flew as if part of the air--an otherworldly freedom so exquisite I wonder if it's attainable at all in earthly existence...
I'm pregnant. I feel abortion's wrong, but can I safely bear a child at 45? But then...
It's my son's ex-girlfriend who's pregnant and my son's the father! But then...
It's my daughter who's pregnant. At least her boyfriend's supportive. But...
CAUTION: THIS FETUS GETS AROUND
As a toddler I repeatedly dreamed I was a married adult with a daughter
of my own, but the dreams always ended with my husband shooting me...
CAUTION: RECURRENT MURDER
I was in Hell. My mom was in a cage suspended over lava. The devil
gave me a cruel choice: "Fry up these kittens or let your mom drop!"
CAUTION: CRUELTY
After lifeline and heartline, the palm-reader points to a rope ladder heading for Orion. I climb. But
it goes brittle, splinters. I flail. She reads, long-distance, one more line: "Wings", she calls. "Wings."
I'm in a tower of men, each son on his father's back, down to a patient overburdened ape.
His savanna's full of angry women who can only see him to yell at. Standoff. We can't escape.
I wake saying "Ease off, let the ape breathe. Let me down...
I was camping by a creek. I went to get soap and returned to find my baby son face-down in the water...
After his dad's death, a boy dreams he's an orphan facing cannibal witches--every night! Therapy helps;
his recurring dreams shift to a manhunt for a criminal who hides on the ceiling. The dreams shift again, to
a tiger hunt. That is, the tiger hunts you. The boy jumps in the sea. Swimming with sharks...
CAUTION: INTENSE NIGHTMARES, PARENTAL LOSS
I always kept a guitar and tape recorder by my bed. I wake up and see the tape's run to the very end.
I ran it back to the start and there, in a sort of ghostly version, was...
Ow! My body parts grow & shrink... A mad orchestra leader pulverizes me for nonconformity...
The Brady Bunch crams siblings into a waterpipe one by one. I'm next! My bones crunch...
I'm blindfolded, perched on a miles-high needle piercing my big toe. Blood drips down...
CAUTION: GLEEFULLY GROSS
In a corrupt world, a talisman called the Rai Dragon offers hope of real change--
IF it can be found, AND used by someone decent-hearted...
Green Day singer Billie Joe hocked a lugie on me in concert. I felt blessed...
CAUTION: EWWW
DREAM: a car crash; my parents both die, though my sister & I are thrown free, unhurt.
DAYS LATER: Aunt & uncle invite me on a car trip; my dad says no, I have to study.
TWO WEEKS LATER: Aunt & uncle die in a head-on; their kids are thrown free...
I dreamed a small plane crashed and burned, but also how the pilot
might be saved. I asked my husband to direct the firetruck...
I dream the AIDS epidemic was all a dream. But my lover dreams of the tunnel of light ahead...
CAUTION: AIDS DEATHS
14 years before the Titanic sailed, Robertson wrote of a great liner, the Titan,
with 3000 people aboard, that strikes an iceberg and sinks in the North Atlantic...
At 16, Rochan dreamt she rose from her body and explored outside, seeing a white car and brown bag. She
woke--and checked! White car, brown bag. Now, adult, she trusts her dream intuitions about larger things...
A mysterious night-encounter with a shapeshifting spiritwoman as elusive as Roethke's poetry...
I'm in a car with Walt Disney. A blonde comes in out of the rain.
He promises to make her a star, and puts his hands...
CAUTION: NOT GRAPHIC, JUST UGH
DREAM: a distinctive house with a tempting green field by it. But the field's forbidden...
DAY: Ronald's analyst had rented that house--but the adjacent field was forbidden...
CAUTION: E.S.P. THEORIES
I dreamed my lover was metal inside. I was sure it meant he had no passion.
I told him. Why did he bitterly ask me to stare into my dream like a mirror?
CAUTION: TROUBLED RELATIONSHIP
Gloom clung to me & I skipped the dance. I begged Frances to ride in a safe car, but coming home...
The foul old fossil woman had carved and burnt her own flesh in the name of art;
we washed her till she was reborn young. It was my turn next to enter the water...
On the Euphrates, a monstrous crocodile eats all his kin. But when a winged ship appears, he feigns remorse...
My friend stuffs a broken feeder with birdseed. I worry it'll attract too many wild birds. He laughs "Exactly!"...
I just watch as all the dance students practice the jive step. I think I already know that one...
I have no roots but those I steal--until my father leads me to a sacred tree, saying "Look to your mother"...
Distilling a dream to one key image can clarify it. But don't be ruled totally by traditional haiku form...
Daily dream-poems in haiku style, nonstop for a month. A flood of animals, revenant ghosts, sex changes...
One dream-poem in haiku style each day for a month!
Ghosts, snow, penguins, yoga babies, elves who leave their tree...
A month of dreams full of science fiction: galactic navigation, spacedragons, oppressed fairies, alien love...
Dream poems laid out like a calendar. Themes? Horses, camels, abused girls, vampires--all want their freedom...
Dream haiku laid out like a calendar. Roswila's favorite is the pirate, but mine is the were-salamander...
Tarot cards fuse and meanings layer, to warn me I've similarly (con)fused>
real and trance-induced memories during therapy...
CAUTION: ABUSE ISSUES
A watershed dream for me, since my relationship with my father was, shall I say, conflicted...
CAUTION: ABUSE ISSUES
My horse and I dove into a lagoon and sought buried treasure on the sea-floor. What are we really after?
Nightwalkers lured our empath away. We come to their castle to rescue her.
But she's pregnant with magic. Will she come or stay?
A dream haiku of little devils dancing the conga. What's it mean? Well, check the date...
A mare's brought in to save a rare bloodline. She's young but as extraordinary as her mate: part filly, part feline...
My dreams support a radical break from my past--to let go of possessions and friends in a cross-country move...
A dream haiku telling of a dog-pack saved by the intuition of a mutt with a mangled ear...
In her kitchen she offers me shortcake. She's short herself, for she gives away all
to everyone--only her bodiless head is left...
The first two dragons numb my pain. I demand it back, and soon regret my haste.
But the third dragon I seduce, for I'm a dragon now...
You'd think his Christmas wish would be "a new eye"; well it was, in a way...
A kinky seduction slips into something more uncomfortable: the Qabbalah? Or possibly leather...
CAUTION: EROTICA OR ESOTERICA?
I meet a female Bigfoot, who, to my surprise, quietly speaks my tongue.
She's mourning the death of her infant son...
by Daughn Lee and Roswila; 1999 (2000?), a collaborative dream-poem
Alternating stanzas by very different poets, based on
Roswila's dream of bellydancing in the streets...
A joyful song about ignoring your critics. The last stanza came verbatim from the dream...
I defeat the knife-wielder, in spite the blade in my belly I can't pull out. I may have to let it be...
Skimming over the lake on surface tension as two sharks prowl beneath, I'm not sure who's fishing for whom...
My father's trapped in a crashed car. But I'm distracted by a young man whose palm cups a living flame...
Rousseau's painting of a woman on a red sofa in a glorious
jungle really was dream-based--just not his dream...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SLACKING
On a scorching world not built for people like us,
I find someone who seems to be a lot like me...
DAY: Rowland needed papers for a legal case, but couldn't find where his father had stashed them.
DREAM: his long-dead dad told R.J. a lawyer R.J. he'd never heard of had them, 'but the man may need
some reminding', and gave details of Portuguese gold and a drinking bout. Next day, it worked. But how?
CAUTION: GHOST? E.S.P.?
People have asked me if I ever dream that I am 'in' Harry's world. The answer was 'no' until a few nights ago...
Roya's mother-in-law had a painful death. Roya dreamt she met her, a joyous bird,
who had forgotten the pain of death just as we forget the pain of birth...
CAUTION: NICE, BUT NOT EVIDENCE
In the cathedral, before the nation, I solemnly crown someone with my own detached head...
I ask my dreams about sex, and get... sex on a beach with a sea-serpent girl--a lamia. But she gets queasy--
landsick! Too hot for her up here. Help her back in the sea. What a contrast with Ruskin's lamia nightmare...
CAUTION: SCALY SEX
I've got too many obligations, an elderly relative to care for, and now giant birds are invading my house.
CAUTION: STALKING, KILLER BIRDS
I visit a beautiful artificial mountain with loved ones--but my demons overwhelm me one by one.
CAUTION: SUICIDAL FEELINGS, BODY HATE/FATPHOBIA, IMPLIED RAPE
It was way too late to call, but an irrational urge made me wake my friend up and pester her until...