A small, clear, simple precognitive dream... and its un-small, un-clear, un-simple cause...
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...
DAY: Friends described JW Dunne's experiments with time. I decide to look for dream elements from the future.
DREAM: I meet Oscar Wilde & other writers I dislike. A nonsense word like TELPOE or PELTOE appears...
DAY: A letter arrives full of anagrams (based on my poetry) about Oscar Wilde & other writers I dislike...
Edgar Allen Poe confronts his dead girlfriend, who wants to drag him into the grave with her...
CAUTION: HUNGRY GHOST, SEX TALK
I dreamt my friend Anne Sexton's death was on the news.
I woke, the phone rang, and I learned she'd...
CAUTION: SUICIDE
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?
DREAM: I write a book involving spies and Lord Snow, but give him a cover name: Artie Shaw.
TWO WEEKS LATER: My wife & I go on the Tonight Show; unexpectedly, Artie Shaw shows up!
I tell him the dream. He turns pale, saying "No one knows this--I wrote a book under the name..."
CAUTION: WILL BOTHER E.S.P. SKEPTICS
A host of Fred Astaires dance mid-air in an endless spiderweb,
then pound on typewriters randomly forever...
A publishing-house error made them reject Tolkien's mythical work, and demand a sequel to The Hobbit...
DAY: I bike across San Francisco writing down what I actually see.
DREAM: I'm an abused English heiress with a dangerous alien artifact...
CAUTION: HAUNTED BY CHILD ABUSE
Bradbury's Mars was based on his life in Venice, California. What worlds grow out of my San Francisco?
I'm a middle-aged British writer in a triad with a sculptor and a dairy farmer
who seem happy sharing me. But it's a small town, so we must be discreet...
CAUTION: TRIAD THAT WORKS
A long terrible shiver, and my whole body broke like glass. I may live months, but in that dream I died...
As I wrote a poem on Caliban, I dreamt I was him: taken to Shakespeare's England,
shown as a freak, I must escape to save Miranda and Prospero from assassins...
I meet a big cat who seems invisible to most humans. She talks in Armenian speech balloons.
Too bad she already has a boyfriend! But her mere existence proves there's hope for me...
My writer-friend Cecy will do anything to get published. Anything? Oh, believe me, ANYTHING...
CAUTION: BONDAGE, not to mention POSTAGE
People SAY they like realistic characters they can identify with, but they don't ACT like it...
Our writing class meets in this Victorian home. I turn off my filters and describe what I really see around me...
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...
After a day of medical mess-ups, I dream whites routinely cheat super-fast Native American pony couriers,
till the riders demand showy down payments called Contract Cloaks. Now cheats'll get publicly exposed...
I always wrote some letters strangely--my 'd' was nearly illegible. So I set out to retrain my deep motor skills...
CAFTAN: My ultra-conservative brother wears a caftan. No way!
I woke amused. But later that day, he gave me a Christmas present...
DICKENS: A voice rants "I love Dickens! It has to be Dickens!"
Next evening on Night Gallery, Agnes Moorehead begs for...
I struggle to write down a bizarre dream clearly and simply, but pen & paper both mutate.
Then a child prodigy explains "dreams don't always want to be linear"...
Trump wackos bomb the World Trade Center. I flee New York. Morticia Addams puts us up. Inside the
dream, I fall asleep. When I wake I ask "was the attack a dream?" Morticia says it was smaller. I try to
write it all down on my bedsheet, but the ink spreads. I wake again, sure I need to wash the sheet...
I ride my tricycle all round Sydney trying to get bureaucratic approval
to feed bananas to my friend the grizzly bear, gooey though he gets...
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...
Distilling a dream to one key image can clarify it. But don't be ruled totally by traditional haiku form...
Are dreamworlds grim, on average? Do our dreams just express fears, or try to SOLVE our problems?
This dreamer is starting to notice certain subtle signs that all
is not normal and this may be a dream. Well, not that subtle...
In the cave, I chanted "Come Kama, Come Love..." and a procession of strange creatures came down the stone steps;
squirrels, peacocks, a blue birdlike being with golden headdress, and then the Goddess of Love. Her form shocked me...
His literary afterlife was just six inches of shelf space. But then friends brought more, trucks more, til I slid down hills of paper...
CAUTION: DEATH'S AFTERMATH
Granny's magic nipple helps me foil the yuppies dumping toxic
waste. But does it count if I did it just to save my own...
CAUTION: CRUDE TALK; STETHESCOPIC NIPPLE
My new editor starts rejecting my poems. My new new editor rewrites them for me. I feel lucky not to be arrested...
As it was revealed that the pianist in Truro Cathedral was T.S. Eliot's illegitimate daughter, her
wretched playing suddenly became beautiful. I knew the dream meant "cleave to the illegitimate"...
I’m falling into endless darkness. I feel like screaming, but then I remind
myself I’m dreaming. “What is for me here?” I demand. “SHOW ME!” I begin
rising toward the stars. Huge metal discs with alien writing rise with me...
My classmates stole my pen. My teacher condones it. I am, after all, a hated minority.
They won't even SELL me one. So I write my final in blood--three huge, crude letters...
I read The Best American Poetry, 2007, but it just isn't, and I find myself writing a Savage Poetic Response...
Climbing out of Childhood Abyss, I literally get a leg up from a girl seeking the Ledge of Teens.
A shy girl has to hide she's a were-creature. Gay men make out in the witch-registry to rattle its
homophobic guardians. My sister stripteases while scolding me for a mess I didn't make...
CAUTION: DUH, SEX TABOOS! KIDS, FURS, GAYS, SIBLINGS
I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing
he had put together; I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out...
My horse and I dove into a lagoon and sought buried treasure on the sea-floor. What are we really after?
A friend claims literary "personalities"--humorist, craftsman, kook, lowbrow--are really just marketing
niches. So write as you like! If readers like you, industry will make a niche for you, almost arbitrarily...
CAUTION: FOR WRITERS ONLY. OR IS IT?
Perched on a huge sandpile by the train track, I wrote. Then met a narcissistic
hipster chasing happiness and sex. But this globe's austere and full of hurt...
Comics character Doctor Blasphemy, on stilts, bares his secret identity:
poet Allen Ginsberg! But who chopped off his missing fingers?
CAUTION: BLOODY FINGERS
I, sleeping me, watch dream-me find a third me who saw too much
in the kitchen. Unconscious or dead? I just don't know...
1: I try to grow feathers and fly, but half-fail, half-succeed--experience two bodies at once...
2: I fly to escape a hippie cult. They fire heat-seeking missiles! But I may be too cool to track...
After a bad writing class, I meet a shy catgirl guarding a Mongolian Hot Pot, and discover who I am...
I'm a brown sparrow scratching in the dirt, looking for bugs. Focused, tireless, I hunt and peck...
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'm a lab animal who discovers voice software and creates a personal zine, testifying for our rights...
My friend put an ad on her gown, so I try one on our house. I have big ideas for more, but a pickpocket...
An archeological dig inscribed in the Roman alphabet, Chinese characters, Ethiopian
syllabics and unknown scripts. A carved egg bears news from the future, not the past...
CAUTION: CALLS PROPHECY A LEARNABLE SKILL
Writer Joan Grant, who was a psychic and trance channeler, got a sort of reading herself, from H.G. Wells...
At least fantasy and science fiction address my life-issues; "realism" just declares me nonexistent...
The true story of the very first tree-hugger. Not Kerouac! You'll never guess. In fact, you'll say it's impossible...
I dream a Chinese fable: how the poet Li Po was abucted by the gods, till they face heavenly justice...
CAUTION: ABDUCTION, DRUNKS, EVIL PUN
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?...
Li Bai's mother dreams of Venus shining, and names her unborn son Bai, 'white'. She dreams he'll ride a
red dragon, too: greatness, but what kind? Li Bai when young dreams the answer: his brushpen flowers!
I'm Emily Dickinson reborn in 2100 as a breeder of hydroponic lilies, till my dad drafts me as
an Arctic energy-prospector, where I meet a ghost, a fiery Beast, a new me, and the girl of my dreams...
CAUTION: QUEER-POSITIVE, NUDE PROSPECTORS, GNOMIC DICKINSON QUOTES
Lions trap me in an African cave with only coffee, paper and pens! Is this what it takes to get me to write?
DREAM: a weird-looking guy says he's a Private Nose, who can read my
life history by sniffing my lunch. He gets a lot right--but just as much wrong.
NEXT DAY: My sister takes me to lunch & orders tea-leaf salad. Our waiter is...
I walk the corridors smiling, realizing for the first time that I don't have to go to high school---because I'm a great writer...
What I write in my books and think I have made up has a creepy way of coming true. I noticed it first...
CAUTION: DISTURBING INVOLUNTARY MANIFESTATIONS
I befriend author Andre Norton--an ageless high-school kid writing enthused fan fiction, forever...
I find my Niche--the stone nook that decides if I'm a journeyman mage! Here comes my prophecy...
My friend Lily misuses the word 'Mareotic'; I know, because I once saw it in a Yeats poem, thought
the footnote explaining it was fishy, checked it myself, and found the editors hadn't even bothered to...
A mad experiment one night in Micrography, with a midnight rant for scripture and my girlfriend for God...
CAUTION: BLASPHEMY OF SOME KIND OR OTHER
Joyce, in Paris, dreamed he was attacked by three madmen, Minos, Eaque and Rhadamanthe. Three weeks later,
a madman mailed explosive packages around Paris--signed Minos, Eaque and Rhadamanthe, the Judges of Hell...
Should I subscribe to Sundance Community Dream Journal? I dream I find a letter--yellowish paper, cryptic blue
lettering, a red margin. I eat it! Best thing I ever tasted. I wake and order that journal. It arrives--and the cover is...
I fly, send dreamails, discuss dreams with dream folk, punch a wall to test dream-pain, reach into mirrors...
I commute to my dreamjob on a four-story bus; then my baby brother
(who I wouldn't let eat any chocolate pudding) utters a new poem by William Blake...
Advice from a successful writer of worstsellers to all you aspiring failures: unfame has its price...
In an Oakland literary salon (no, not an oxymoron) I'm supposed to
write an ode. But it's so hot, and I have surreal dreams to sketch...
I hung the dream-net over my bed. It worked. A blue-winged man with a leg of silver came to me,
drummed, danced, offered to teach me secrets. Awake, I found a blue feather caught in that net...
An open microphone in a San Francisco cafe. Others tell stories, sing songs, chant poems. But I
want to tell a shamanic dream! To an audience sure that dreams are dull, incoherent, meaningless...
Age 7 to 11, I often dreamt I inhabited a consistent geography of mountains & deserts. I was an adult of dark
complexion in non-European clothes; I spoke a tongue (and read a script) that I didn't recognize when awake...
CAUTION: ADULT DRUG EXPERIMENT; PAST LIFE MEMORY?
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 rise out of my body, find I'm invulnerable, visit the moon, with its volcanic rocks, re-enter
my body, "wake" and write the dream--only to wake again and find all my notes gone!...
Mom's vanished, and our writer/bohemian dad's caring for us
alone now. But he's barely coping. And he's me...
Turns out my life's a TV show. My scriptwriter is half pegasus, half dragon,
and my own humanity has been her science-fictional imagination all along...
CAUTION: FURRY NUDITY
After a rainy hike I'm cold and muddy. In the camp's hot tub, six girls splash and play.
They welcome me, but I feel shy. They slowly become winged ponies! Were-Pegasi...
CAUTION: HOT-TUB NUDITY
Frederick dreams a monk writes words on the door of Wittenburg’s church
with a pen so big it pokes the Pope. The next day...
DREAM: a weird music player that you feed "tapes" made of Z-folded, perforated paper... backward.
NEXT DAY: my boss tries to fix a balky printer by feeding it Z-folded, perforated paper... backward.
Will you walk in the fields, love? / Let us be gone.
The tall grass will wave to thee / Fairest one...
A literary agent proposes a novelization offer from a writer I've barely heard of. Twelve weeks later...
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...
How do we make dream narratives readable, when so many
readers are brainwashed to think they're nonsense?
I was trapped in a Handmaid's Tale dystopia; I was a mannequin, naked &
helpless. I couldn't even walk. But I hid one rebellious act: I kept a diary...
CAUTION: CARTOON NUDITY, CARTOON DYSTOPIA
I'm told a girl in an armored nutrient-bath wheechair has my shoes. I need them back. But
to get them I have to answer the riddle written on her breasts. We both get a bit distracted...
CAUTION: CARTOON BREASTS
Six women in six similar feudal empires swap places repeatedly. They can never meet,
but they can leave notes, each helping out the next soul to swap in...
CAUTION: ADVANCED DREAMWORK
Blake was broke. Couldn’t typeset Songs of Innocence and Experience.
But in a dream, his brother advised him...
The posse lost their enemy; reluctantly they asked a tracking detective--me.
They found him where I knew he'd be--from eating my Rolodex cards...
I'm a small child in Finland writing out the meaning of three ancient runes
about trees, ships and elbow room. They seem to hold serious advice...
I sit on a half-flooded pier and read a dream-journal--the first ever written by a dog. But
I can't interview the dreamer; the dog followed a fad diet and just died of excess salt...
As a boy, my family urged me to aim low and follow our trade: stonecarving. I dreamt two strong women fought
over me, a grubby sculptor and an elegant writer. I sided with the writer, and she let me ride in her flying chariot...
Should I try to keep Janine out of jail? But outside, she'd gotten back on drugs. That night I dreamed
a huge beautiful snake bit my writing hand, and said "Don't go to court. Stay home and write"...
CAUTION: JUNKIE, RESCUER
I dream I'm an insomniac trapped in a flat full of snoring writers and reporters. Wait a minute...
Samuel Pepys dreamt of kidneystones, pee, come, & snot--or did he? Thomas Macauley dreams his niece confesses...
I'm a peace terrorist trapped in Squaw Valley, herded like a mare by a huge stallion made of snow...
And then the dream shifts. I blurt out the truth behind our idiotic waking world! And wake believing it...
CAUTION: MERMAID AND HORSE NUDITY
I dream peaceful Rebecca Solnit turns into violent Valerie Solanis. Her excuse is, she was kidnapped and raped--
now she only trusts dogs. I mean, sexually, too... The dream warns that furries like me may relate to animals
better, due to abuse by humans. If so, I've got more therapy to do..
CAUTION: ABUSE ISSUES (text only; no abuse images)
I was desperately arranging cut flowers for something important; the forces
that acted upon me seemed to say "Your life depends upon this assemblage"...
I find the sketch-journal of a beautiful winged sphinx who left her mythic isle
to explore a great city of crazy bipeds, called San Francisco...
CAUTION: SPHINX SEX, SPHINX ATTITUDE
Stevenson's dreams changed over decades: from childhood nightmares into
creative collaborators dreaming whole stories...
A comet grows hair, a girl named Rosalie becomes a bed of roses, writing in a beautiful
hand appears on a beautiful hand, and Sylvia becomes a talking forest bird...
On the road with a poet and a philosopher, I insist we rescue an owl.
But we get lost, and the poet turns into...
Nightmares can warn. But when awake, what warning can you get from nonstop ill-luck?
1: Three sisters flash me; one has a third eye in there! Clothed, it's blind. Was she just enlightening herself?
2: In the future, most cars self-drive. I'm the last driver using my own muscles and mind. Can I hold out?
3: A friend charts all of history's wars to prove: democracies don't fight each other. So to get peace...
CAUTION: NAKED EYE
My father's trapped in a crashed car. But I'm distracted by a young man whose palm cups a living flame...
Three dreams set on Abenaki holy ground, of weird shamans--one ashen, one pumpkin-headed, the
third goofy-faced--lead me to visit the site. Where I find the river's washed up that third shaman's face...
CAUTION: WILL BOTHER E.S.P. SKEPTICS
I'm a spirit flying over the dead, blessing them. They're in mass graves, sorted & grouped
only by their life-stages--kids, adults, elders. Wait... is this how to structure my book?
In a world where speech is in Mayan glyphs, comedian Tina Fey (dressed for prom night)
climbs a Tibetan peak to learn levitation. But the flying monks are scared of women...
CAUTION: COOTIES; ROWDY JESUS; MAY FLUNK THE BECHDEL TEST
Psychics give me an incomprehensible reading. A book from the tree-library gives only Victorian dating advice.
At last a madman gives me a treasure-box holding a tooth that unfolds into slices carved in unreadable symbols...
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...
You get 26 dice with letters on every face. Roll them all. Your haiku must use every letter. Go!
I dreamed my mouth was full of typewriter keys and a typewriter ribbon issued from the back of my head. Joan
was hanging out the window by the ribbon. I reached for her, but my hands kept hitting the space bar, and down...
DAY: the crew of the Enterprise sings about love & career(ism). DREAM: I'm taking a test at Starfleet Academy.
But my teacher's a gorgeous unicorn, & my answers are filled in! I try to change one but my eraser breaks...
CAUTION: MOCKS LA BERGE'S LUCID DREAMWORK? NUDE PROFESSOR, TOO
All I know about humans, I learned in psychodrama. I gawked as caterpillars grew wings. Except me...
I was on a spiral stair. The walls had scrawled messages, not sprayed,
carved or painted but living tissue--and getting fresher as I descended. Whatever was growing them was still below me, and still writing...
God speaks in surreal images from the sky, and I hurry to write down
what God says. But I find I wrote mere squiggles on the page...
VAUGHAN'S DREAM: I visit Kurt Vonnegut. Kids all over. He's going on a trip soon. Mentions of 'Jerome' and an island...
VONNEGUT REPLIES: "That night, childrens' author Jerome B visited; we discussed my upcoming trip to England..."
A murder case. But the suspect had gone to an interpreter and told of an ominous dream.
The investigator saw its strange images might be puns, naming the real killer--and they did...
Huge balloons labeled "Waymo" in bad Chinese are taking over San Francisco.
But the sexy balloonists seem to be more into masturbation than conquest...
CAUTION: EXHIBITIONISM OR OBJECTIFICATION?
Werecat Syndrome runs in my family. Academics assume I'm a savage predator.
Why? All I want to do is rub up against girls and find one who purrs back...
I'm a girljock waiting to see a movie when a weredog in line involuntarily shifts
from dog to human, and a Berkeley radical takes offense at the symbolism...
CAUTION: SNIPPY ABOUT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
I feel horrified--how publishers will batten on the sufferings of junkey musicians... unbearable...
DAY: I work way too much--art projects plus helping a friend get her lost data back...
DREAM: A gun nut threatens me, so I claim I bent his gun. Really I just bent spacetime.
He flees atop his toy car, letting it steer--it's smarter than he is. That car winks at me...
I often dream of words forming on a page as their images dance around me. Here's an example...
I dreamt the world itself hired me, at a generous salary, to report its great affairs exactly as they happen...
We go swimming in a sea full of wrecked tankers. We explore one derelict, but ebb tide pries it off the bank,
out to sea. Do we swim for shore, or wait, hoping high tide will wash it in again? Guess wrong and we die...
A writer's found in his office mating with an ash-covered creature! But could she be his muse?
CAUTION: NUDITY OR NOT? SEX OR NOT? NO ONE QUITE KNOWS...
Most writers search for their unique style. Not me--I struggle to convey unique EXPERIENCES...
You cannot stay forever / on this side of the river
with darkness coming over / and salt has lost its savor...