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First, I am either with a roommate or a friend
who is telling me
how he is from Montana
the big sky state.
I have heard
the women of Montana
are the way I want to be,
courageous, resourceful,
determined and strong;
which is why
they were among the first
to get the vote;
and that also like me,
they share a reverence
for all
life.
He says it's true,
and I should go there some time.
I ask him if the winters there
are beautiful and harsh.
I ask him
if the
coffee there is hot.
2:
I am out in the sunlit patio
at the Ark,
where I use to live in Austin
I am standing by the pool
with either a woman or a couple,
and telling her, or them,
how I grew up speaking Spanish----
but that now
I just speak English.
As we
discuss this,
it begins to dawn on me
that I am nude,
yet we go
right on talking
as though nothing is amiss.
How can they not
notice?
Is it possible
they can not see?
I half expect to here
someone say something like,
"Pardon me.
I don't mean to offend you,
but do you
realize that you're ... ...» '''«
but no one says a word.
I suppose
they only want to be polite.
3:
I get a feeling
of a room,
a bad and dismal feeling,
some one wants to kick me out.
A girl comes out
those
plate-glass sliding doors;
(It's a bossy little bee
I use to know).
and pulls me back inside,
then hauls me to the desk.
This teenage kid back
there is talking ...
But in the real world
I am deaf,
so in
the dream
I can not hear him;
and bossy bee yells
in my bad ear
in that crude and ugly way
the hearing do:
"HE CHECKED THE COMPUTER AND HE SAID THAT YOU CAN STAY FOR
NOW BUT YOU STILL HAVE TO MOVE OUT."
4:
In the real world,
I am blind.
So in the dream
she tries
to haul or punch or drag me
(not quite knowing which to do)
down the hall,
in that clumsy
bumbling way
the sighted do,
as if I were
a heavy shapeless bag.
It is a long,
long hallway,
and from somewhere far away
there is a dank and chilling
draft,
and I am still nude.
And I begin to shiver.
This hall reminds me of a nursing
home,
of a place where life is ended,
of the hospital and morgue,
of the school
where children died
because a caretaker got sloppy.
She tries to
either pull or punch or push me
(Not quite knowing which to do)
down an endless spiral of stairs,
I am gliding smoothly
down, down, down, ...
like skiing, like flying,
without taking any steps;
but bossy bee
can not keep up with me,
having to climb down
the usual way.
Finally, at the bottom,
she tries to pull
or push or stuff me
(not quite knowing which to do)
in a cold and cheerless room;
and I begin to scream.
"Let me walk
Please let me walk;
!
''' I can walk, dammit! ''' ''' '''"
5:
At last, I am alone.
I open the door,
letting out a dank and chilling draft,
and I begin to shiver;
although there seem to be
no open windows in the room,
no air vents,
no furniture,
nothing there at all.
I am feeling
like unwanted useless merchandise,
like a heavy shapeless bag,
a pittiful quivvering blob
of rotting putrid meat,
an inert and bloated corpse,
to be warehoused in cold storage
and
thrown out.
Then, from far away,
I can hear the distant strains
of the Beach Boys' classic song,
»In my Room.«
and that is when I feel it:
the hot and stinging tears,
the gut-wrenching despair----
eating,
gnawing at my very vitals,
Melting me inside.
They don't know
about the roiling churning cauldron
of chaos, longing, and desire
that seethes and burns inside me.
alone in my room,
alone in my life,
and they don't even care
about the raw and gushing hemorrhage,
bleeding,
deep inside my heart.
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