The Director

Here's my dream: walls covered in pages
torn from porno magazines -- animal skins
haphazardly arranged -- I float in on cloud
or carpet -- oil paint fumes

Lights...I have thoughts that frighten me
eating spoonfuls of mud -- pushing a fat woman
out of a moving car -- getting in the boxing ring
to face a disembodied arm -- a hovering fist

Ideas and images replace breath and heartbeat
unable to move -- unable to wave away words
I'll talk when I have something to say
when the world ends I won't be here

Disappeared into dreams -- nightmares
the beginning of a script -- written
on the hem of my pants in Haitian Creole
allergic to math books and rainy days

Don't you think all of this will soon be gone?
this kingdom of excess
an automatic disaster
in the laundromats and diners of a lost era?

The glue and nails and fuses
brackets -- bricks and screws
the screens -- the starlets
hunks and drugs -- the drivers

The genies -- the midnights and dawns
the smoke and gunsmoke
and the bodies all dissolving
into flickering images in washed out light.

Come here -- I'll show you what's in my dream book
the shadows on the walls -- those tangled vines
make thorny thoughts -- every thought a babble
in somebody's journal and I - I thought - have access to them all!

Seahorses -- rosemary -- pantyhose -- quail
a mudbucket dumped in the grass outside the front door
full of crawdads -- chemicals -- coins
charades -- emblems of an arbitrary world's treasure chest

Heaped open -- daring me -- staring me in the face
if I touch it -- this hell -- this hell becomes real
this hell in my head -- shadows on the walls
a wishing well -- chimes go off

What I see I can make real
for all to see -- this hell -- this hell
bleeding in the countryside
fainting at the ball.

Come here -- sit with me -- I can't
open my eyes -- fingers beg a little more time please
don't dump me out the bottom of your teacup
don't drain the pond yet -- don't boil the lobster

I admit -- sometimes I am so proud
of my dream book -- I take a look around
I don't know if I wrote it or if only in my dreams
I can walk through its pages

The world torn down -- fed through a sawmill
ice water to ease the throbbing
black mountain where the goatherd
keeps his eyes on the shadows

This peaceful room a riot -- you should believe me
it gets so loud -- vinegar pours through the closets
where I keep my sailors -- lions terrorize the morning
with their invisible tails -- I shoot inside the lines.

When I close my eyes -- I feel the tape roll
a runway -- a little boy -- in the armpit
of his destiny -- an earthquake -- leaving me
leaving this little island -- alone

Obliterated -- teeming with demons -- the lights
and the runway -- when I close my eyes the awful
sensibilities subside -- what a room costs
light to be held up in -- ketchup wounds

Visibility breeds deterioration
a ghost town where the sheriff's already dead
a decorated vet -- someone whose star
like mine -- floats above the fallen

A traffic accident -- a misdemeanor
possession charge -- density already diminishing
bad hairday -- nobody says what they mean
they all want to fuck -- take drugs -- save themselves

They don't really care about what they're pretending
it's all to fool some observer -- but I
am the observer -- I see right through
the acts -- the costumes -- the insecurities

and make a book where people can be free -- smoke
sex -- monsters -- gluttony -- all excess allowed -- pink
walls -- idolatry -- hedonism -- fear -- infancy
a little boy on a runway -- running -- running