I was pregnant with a child not my husband's. I wanted to leave him, but not to join my lover;
I was done defining myself through men. Nor did I want the child. I got a knitting needle, and...
CAUTION: READ THE TITLE!
After he died, I dreamed that the phone rang and when I said "Hello"...
High-voltage traces of our lust and love flowed through our mattress nightly...
until one night when the power surged and overflowed. Then I felt you...
Three years before her husband died and she was left alone, Sarashina dreamt
Amida Buddha stood in her garden and told her "Later I shall return to fetch you"...
Blake dreams he's a young queen with an uneasy relationship to her guardian angel...
Edgar Allen Poe confronts his dead girlfriend, who wants to drag him into the grave with her...
CAUTION: HUNGRY GHOST, SEX TALK
I find myself at a party in London observing two minutes of silence for the dead of World Wars One and Two. But then, in the park,
blowing across the grass like leaves, were people. The windows imploded. Surely, I thought, there should be a flash before the wind?
My dead friend Charlie and his sister and I are driving around
Lake Erie. We know it’s a dream and he’s dead, and yet we’re joyous...
I was a reptilian archeologist, a million years from now.
What I dug up at the beach threatened my marriage...
In our marshlands, tides, birds, dogs come and go; but must our friends and lovers, too?
CAUTION: AIDS DEATHS
I'm half-naked at an arty dinner party, talking to a man I really think I ought to recognize... who is he?
CAUTION: TOPLESS JUNGIAN
I burst into tears for no reason and for 15 minutes begged my brother-in-law not to go, then said...
CAUTION: GRUESOME
My son Billie, his Navy uniform soaking wet, cried "Oh, Mom--it's so terrible!"
and shrank into a baby again as I held him...
CAUTION: EXPLOSION
Would the Revolutionaries in the Basement really blow up the Committee of Idealists upstairs?
CAUTION: MAD BOMBERS! WELL, GRUMPY ONES
A bride flies as a ghost, invisible, inaudible, sealed in a crystal shell; a guide
shows her what'll happen if she can't shatter her armor and show her love...
A certain intensity marks some dreams as predictive, whether they foresee a death or a crisis averted;
but I keep quiet about them, writing them only in a locked diary. Once I spoke up, and was shunned...
CAUTION: DISTURBING ANALOGY WITH SEX-ORIENTATION CLOSET
An epic dream on the lifelong effects of unrequited love, compressed into seven stanzas...
I'm a doctor in the future, trying to heal the neurolink between a girl and her cat...
Indiana: Father's favorite clock, a cuckoo clock, stopped at exactly the time he died...
Florida: an old clock silent for years started up at 10:20, the time of my husband's death the day before...
Clowns have a point system like chess masters, & abuse their apprentices to get ahead,
just like capitalism--but I think this dream's about the suppression of magic...
CAUTION: CHILD-CLOWN ABUSE
I'm trapped in an alien hotel, my true love has gone radioactive,
and the only way out is to turn into a giant, scary...
CAUTION: CLOSET LESBIAN. LITERAL CLOSET.
A girl I like invites me to her apartment. Her personal stormcloud hovers over her. Her housemates come home
and warn me "It's always there, it's her attitude," and I realize I like angsty intelligence, but I need a sunny...
The tale of a gray heart trying to heal leads to unicorn-hostage drama in the Transamerica Pyramid...
CAUTION: SEX, MAFIA THREATS, VIOLENCE
On the Euphrates, a monstrous crocodile eats all his kin. But when a winged ship appears, he feigns remorse...
The only man in the Miss America Japanese Tea Ceremony Swimsuit Pageant, I learn a tearful lesson...
CAUTION: DYSFUNCTIONAL FLIRTING
We were as if brother and sister of old in the desert land;
they sold us in slavery together before this life had begun...
In the paper factory where my dad worked all his life, I find him on
his deathbed. Even as he fades, he's still trying to please his bosses...
An endless parade of drowned sailors sing a dirge. The dreamer woke in tears. Then the news arrived.
I protect my friends from a demon, but the dream-guardians I summon terrify me...
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
The boy and I walk a spiral trail down the mountain to the caves of tears...
Dr Who kills his best friend, a huge white tern, on a whim. Furious, I demand a rewrite...
CAUTION: WANTON MURDER
I planned suicide. Then my friend 1000 miles away said in my ear "Don't do that, Marion." Next day an airmail...
SUICIDAL NARRATOR
A ghost complains Herdis's grandma bothers her. Herdis wakes, tells Grandma, and they dig up the floor to find...
4 AM. A train wakes us all. We watch it pass, thinking of lost friends. And then I wake again to find...
I find my lover sharing our secret joke with another. But I already knew
I'd lost her! Why'd my dream salt the wound?
My children ask me to tell our family history, up to the death of their mother. I wake to find
myself single, my late wife alive but married to another, and my beloved children, phantoms...
CAUTION: 19TH-CENTURY LOGORRHEA
I'm in Hell. No fire, no guilt. Just endless forests under the moon. My mother paints
endlessly but never gets it right. A sunny day, but I can't go out to play. Cut off...
CAUTION: DEPRESSION
Dream haiku laid out like a calendar. Roswila's favorite is the pirate, but mine is the were-salamander...
Terse dreamlets quietly catch World War I's effect. Faith died in the trenches...
My brother-in-law Eddy was out hunting with a boy whose shotgun had its safety off. Suddenly Eddy...
CAUTION: VIOLENT, PREVENTABLE DEATH
Demons open a trunk full of the horrors I've faced this year, and lay them out, mocking me... but is that all?
Dream of a breakup I see coming but can't prevent, and the devastation it works on my lover...
DREAM: Lu's best friend had to go away. They composed poems on the sadness of parting...
DAYS LATER: Lu learned that on the night of his dream, his friend had been killed in an uprising...
A bug with a horse-skull face reappears all through this nightmare of betrayal. I only know I feared it...
A pensive leonine woman resting on a tilted rock. A life drawing with certain imaginary spots.
CAUTION: MILD NUDITY
I found myself in a cafe in Amsterdam--or was it Sevilla?--with Kevin, who I knew was dead...
CAUTION: GRIEF
Examples of inexplicable moods that appear (after the fact) to be reactions to future events...
I felt like my heart was in my stomach. My friend Lyx opened me up & said "It is." She scolded me for eating it...
CAUTION: URP
After a year of intense dreamwork, Berryman rejects Freud and accepts open-ended dreaming, and writes Dream Songs...
CAUTION: SIXTIES STONER REBELLING AGAINST SPELLING... and grammar... and punctuation...
I'm an orphan shapeshifter enslaved by a gold-eating monster. But I meet a cat-girl with a hammer...
CAUTION: BAD FOSTER-DAD; CAPITALIST MONSTER; VIOLENCE (TO VENDING MACHINES)
Poem from a book on how love can save lives & souls, read in two dreams of a Renaissance astrologer's library...
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 reporter interviews the guardian angel of my dead sister Jill in front of a
green screen. He's dissolving in grief--luminous holes show through...
In a Hopi underworld, I find even lucid dreaming can't cure guilt and grief over losses yet to come...
Two days before 9/11, I dream I'm a child at ground zero, mourning the devastation--and witnessing rebirth.
Four childhood dreams predicting Gudrun's life; plus a predictive dream by her husband Thorkell Eyjolfson
Gudrun dreams of four treasures: a hood, a bracelet, a ring, a jeweled helm. Her cousin sees them as four marriages...
All his guilty dead were coming home, begging to be let in...
And then he was on the outside, looking in at the lone living man...
CAUTION: GUILT, GRIEF, THE LIVING DEAD
As my grandmother is dying, I have a dream about what really went on in her house...
CAUTION: CHILD SLAVERY
In Japan, sick in bed, reading a book on radiation sickness, I dream of a restorative ritual for trees...
CAUTION: GRUESOME
My family calls me a blonde bimbo and won't give me my inheritance, so I take drastic steps...
CAUTION: MORAL HAIRSPLITTING
I'm a slave dancer. I run for it, and make it over the border. But my owner comes looking for me...
CAUTION: NUDITY, SLAVE SOCIETY
Soil turns to air for me; I float in the dark between tree roots
and stones, thinking "If only I could remember my name"...
As my brother was dying, I had a series of vivid premonitory dreams about him. But I was unprepared for...
DREAM: in my car, the window crank turns on its own; my invisible girlfriend is crawling
out the window! She's turned so quiet & private. Have I seen the last of her? Well, not seen...
NEXT DAY: I stumble on a one-off manga about an invisible girl; but the artist writes "I
decided not to make her a regular--too quiet & private, & I can't draw her feelings"...
CAUTION: GLASSY NUDITY, E.S.P. SPECULATION
Not long after Jake died, I dreamed he took me on a magic carpet ride. Since then, I've been flying...
Soon after my friend and mentor James Merrill died, I had recurring, elusive dreams about him...
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 Joey's infant daughter Jesse died, her father-in-law woke up 500 miles away and announced, "The baby..."
Jill, pregnant, got a high fever. She dreamt her child's soul was locked out of the house. That fetus died.
Jill, pregnant again, got a high fever, but dreamt a chorus of children happily sang. That fetus lived...
One boring lonely day, I meet a cute teenage bunny who wants to play with me! But half an hour later…
CAUTION: LANGUAGE, INTERSPECIES FLIRTING, AND LOSS
I dream of German dirges I don't know. I hum them for a friend, who shocks me by asking
"Have you abandoned any children, or burned a manuscript?" Right on both counts...
Why'd a spirit-woman come to our reservation to mourn a drowned guy? Her mirrors & candles tell us...
Last night I seemed in your embrace; you were about to die.
Today I wake into my place: you immortal, I...
I wake up as someone else. I go through her working day, till Captain Kirk comes to take me to...
I dreamed I was riding a lion. A few days later, when my husband suddenly left me, I recalled the dream and...
Creatures in the primal sea touch my third eye, dragons cry their eyes out, I fight the Sphinx, and arrive at last in...
A glowworm and nightwatch beetle help out a lost crying ant-woman. It's not always a bug-eat-bug world...
Singing a Lennon love song on a planet of giant women provokes first wonder, then disbelief. Why?
I'm in a loving animal dance troupe, but wake to find I'm alone.
For consolation, I eat at The Terrace, and meet stars. Not film stars...
I'm in a tribe of post-Crash kids with psychic powers, trying to keep nukes from rising again...
CAUTION: CHILD SOLDIERS
I'm Mattie, a pregnant girl on a Lewis and Clark expedition. I miscarry, and they tell me...
You say you're leaving me. I go to grab an ice pick to stab you, but my hand
freezes to the ice block on the stair--I dare not even dream of murder. Since...
CAUTION: RESPONSE TO SPOUSAL SUICIDE
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...
A sea-scape somewhat in the style of Edvard Munch: midnight-sun madness with a hint of suicide...
I dream I live in Hayward, California. One day my family's murdered. Years later I find that dream-street is real...
The smog of Portland is so bad it hides the dream-towers! Only one thing will heal it: making music...
I'm a Romantic poet who defeats the curse of the fountain, to marry; but when our daughter's grown,
a new curse strikes me mute, paralyzed. And I mistake this for old age!
Then, in real life, my dad wakes up from a nap paralyzed...
After Myrna’s husband died, one night she felt him behind her in bed, and he whispered...
Nuclear holocaust. Outside, an ashen waste. I decide to cut my wrists in the tub. But a corpse already fills it.
A man drives up. A voice commands "Make a child!" I protest--the world's gone--but the voice says...
(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...
In my dream I walk through golden glowing woods; I wake to a soggy London November...
The night after my 29th birthday, I dream my youth is literally leaving me. I'm at a party
full of kids and teens; I can't get anyone's name, and they slip away leaving me alone...
I dream we canoe down a river. You say it's barren because this was once the ocean's floor. You're
protective but not longing. I wake on a beach, puzzled why I still feel for you a year later...
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
I'm biking over the English Channel. So mild & easy after the Greenland-to-New-York run...
The engine pinned a young man under it. A crowd gathered, but no one saw the girl on the far side of the tracks...
I'm in my papa's waiting room. I beg him to take a break from his patients now that he's dead, and walk with me...
DREAM: Surgeons cut off both my breasts--without my consent! I feel resigned, but the staff is upset...
DAY: I'm interviewing for a job offering $2,000 less than I make now. Told myself it's OK, but...
CAUTION: MALPRACTICE, MUTILATION
I dreamt I stepped on my engagement ring and crushed its pearl. Next I dreamt ink stained it.
Then I dreamt it fell in the sea, and the brine dissolved it. Then the telegram came: my fiancé...
I'm shown corn plants growing from skulls, and it seems like I must plant some skull-corn myself...
A quarrel between psychic adepts heats up to a war,
thawing Pluto. What will the ice-tribes wish for?
I walk home in cold rain; my hooded robe soaked. It has holes for my long pointed ears.
Hit a thriftshop to buy a dry one, and run into two girls I crushed on but ran away from:
Danielle is comforting Cary who's crying. Their ears are pointed too. Wait--who are we?...
CAUTION: GUILT FOR SINS OF OMISSION?
Our son woke in the night crying "Poor Mrs Timms; poor Mrs Timms!" We knew no
such woman, but it turned out she lived nearby. That day, her son had died in France...
CAUTION: IMPLIES WE'RE TRAINED OUT OF A 6TH SENSE
I don't know what this scene is about--but it's not a dream. A stage, I think. Something from childhood.
CAUTION: BARE BEAR
I get stuck with a one-year mandatory gig as President of the
World, just as Saudi Arabia collapses, and fools rush in...
Margherita's dreamworld is lonely, empty, endless. She wanders on foot. Her husband
gets her a bike, a patch kit, and when she crashes, hears her cry for help--while awake...
CAUTION: MARITAL TELEPATHY OR ITALIAN HYPERBOLE?
I'm swept off sea-rocks, as my scaly guardian watches calmly--letting me drown in the tears I shed...
CAUTION: DROWNING
One by one, we're pulled under the water, the earth... eaten. That's the fate of all flesh. And we're flesh.
CAUTION: HORROR
The rest of us heavenly bodies have each other, but from the Sun's viewpoint, we're just rubble. Alone...
Millay dreams her lover’s attacked in the street, and wakes to realize it’s already happened; he’s lost.
Sarashina adopts a stray cat with oddly refined manners. Her sister dreams the cat tells of her
last life, as the daughter of a high official. The cat does seem to understand human speech...
Even after the Resurrection, a mother and daughter still have issues to clean up...
Gloom clung to me & I skipped the dance. I begged Frances to ride in a safe car, but coming home...
I meet a female Bigfoot, who, to my surprise, quietly speaks my tongue.
She's mourning the death of her infant son...
A newsreel showed a flier for the Schneider Trophy Air Race. I felt a violent shock and said "He's going to die..."
Animal poets at an open mic. My turn! And I find... I'm one. A creature without grammar...
At a party, a sad girl attracts me. But to reach her, I must have an affair with a sexy, frustrated writer...
When I was being battered, I dreamed where it would end
if I didn't leave: dead wife, shot husband...
CAUTION: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
The lights go out, the world's ending. Roz tries to make party snacks and keep folks calm. At last
she notices lights out the window. Other buildings seem fine. Is it really the Apocalypse? Or...
I'm on stage. I have to sing. They just stare. I try dancing. Stony silence. At last,
a second me leads me offstage, saying "You can only fail so many times"...
He said "Oh, Mom, I had a terrible dream. A car ran me down."
I said we could not live by dreams or we live a life of horror...
A vivid nightmare that turned out a week later to be devastatingly true ...
My friend Tanya tries hard to save her marriage, but in her dreams Isidora Duncan,
Carl Jung, even the gods themselves warn her to face their deep incompatibility...
Floating in tears, have you noticed the other cups behind you, unspilled?
The ship carrying my mom to America sails on, as I drown in the sea;
They strap me down to pull out the pieces of my stillborn baby Obdale;
A family/gang called Thanotos invites me to join them...
CAUTION: MISCARRIAGE, DEATH
They're hanging the political traitor in my closet. I stand horrified.
The old man's resigned--no complaint. It's my father, I now realize...
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
A killer tornado traps us in the cellar. I bite my finger. It's boneless--I'm dreaming! I summon...
A couple slips in and out of sleep, dreams, one another's bodies and dreamworlds, trying to connect...
CAUTION: FREUDIAN SYMBOLISM, LITERATE WRITING
The stranger seemed to know me. He said "Tell her about the little dogs, it will comfort her." Two weeks later...
Only up close do I see that the map of these mysterious continents is made of moths. I wake
in Polynesia. By the bed, in a jar, floats one of my hands. For no reason, I begin to cry...
Evicted. Lawsuit. I dream a lawyer sends me a letter full of fox-girls! In East Asia, foxes
mean trouble, but these are friendly--good news is coming! I wake to find we've won a home...
After my mother died, I dreamed I was a girl living after the Apocalypse. I rode my elk
past cars full of corpses, saw friends die, and never could find a single fertile mate...
In our plot to kill the Tyrant, we used his wife. Or... did she use us? She goes mad, but--she's HAPPY...
She tells me there's a stream under the floor, upstairs. Peel back the carpet, pry up the boards. An icy creek.
Trout. She brings me a fishing rod. But the fish say they're too young to die. I feel such guilt and grief...
The dream land was beautiful, but seemed empty 'til I heard piping voices.
An elven band! I gazed in wonder. But they could not (would not?) see me...
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
My sister just bought a biocomputer: an enslaved human brain in a box of weeping skin...
I'm a weremaid, able to pass as human but growing a tail in water. I meet a cute but sad girl,
and deduce she may be like me--just in the closet. Worse! Turns out she thinks she's a freak...
CAUTION: DAMAGE FROM CLOSETING
After seeing Julia Wertz's cartoon history of her entire dreamlife (on one big page!) I dream
Wertz style all night! I don't mind the nightmares--what gets me down is comics' black & white...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARES, SEX
An invisible monster is eating my lettuce patch.
It casts a huge blurry shadow, leaves footprints, but...
I flew joyfully over Sun Valley. But when I landed, I wore a uniform. As I slept in our barracks,
I dreamed--within my dream--of finding two friends in the lake, tangled in a net, long dead. I
"woke" and told a friend my dream. She said in tears "I know someone has to die, but why me?
My sister's fiancé Billy died a year ago. I didn't realize how deep the grief ran till I dreamed...
A huge wolfhound tore past me. My blood froze. The Wild Hunt was carrying off a soul...
When my friends and I learn to fly, all of Middle Earth turns against us!
Fleeing from Saruman's army, I discover the backstage truth about our world...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE, DOOM, PHYSICS! YODA IN THE TUB!
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
A woman I had wronged set her pit bull on me! Hand in its jaws, I gave in, and we both began crying...
The house I'm looking at has unexpected rooms, even a pool, but another buyer beats me out.
An old woman says "Don't worry dear, in time you lose everything." A comfort at first, but then...
A doll sent from China breaks into tears over her exile here in Japan. I reassure her and she becomes real...