matt pond PA

December 6, 2017

These Dreams.

Climbing down into covers on a cold night, I tentatively approach sleep. Eyes rolling back into my head with the images of an erstwhile illuminated world still on display under electric lids.

There is canon fire in here. Strobe light in my mind’s sky. Small furry friends, interplanetary puppets, soft fangs, the apocalyptic comedy cannot save me. Anxious thoughts line up on the starting line and wait for the gun to race in circles. Supposedly chasing dreams, but really looking to raise hell.

(Down in the bunker, I read that my perspective was steering pointless — due to my gender, due to the color of my skin. Strange times in an uneasy cosmos. Many chronic wrongs are righted, while scads of tender graces are simultaneously smeared. The value of a voice shouldn’t be swayed by the fashion of culture or the culture of fashion. This dictum does not wear well. Isn’t it more important than ever — that we hear one another?)

In my dreams, we are performing in a basement banquet hall. Fake flowers, stained curtains over fake windows. All my friends and especially all my ex-friends are there. They say “great show!” even before I’ve climbed on stage. People are dancing out of time, the Hawaiian Punch is mostly vodka. The band and I flash across time and space to our hotel room. We are being interviewed by the skeevy night porter, he touches the cellist’s thigh and I chase him with a steak knife. Since he’s hotel management kin, we have to take matters into our own hands, arms and legs thrown over the balcony edge, he lands softly in the shrubbery and smiles up at us — the devil is down there.

This is the Sunday night struggle. How to fit the world of light and noise inside a creaky cranium. My next mission is to escape. In the new year, into a new world.

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