OLD DREAMS

1. THE GOOD SAMARITAN

In this dream I had
the generous man who died
of some appalling plague
wanted to give me his puny blood
in a mayonnaise jar
(which I did not want)

In this dream
I lay reluctantly naked
upon a white hospital bed
where he has died
declining his philanthropy
feeling guilt

that I was such a thankless
wretch refusing interlocking
clamps and splices
the tethered couplings
that would braid us
blood to blood

refusing to partake
of his mortality


2. COMING AWAKE

I dreamed of you going away
to Switzerland with a puppet lady
a little Swiss cottage

like something off a clock
stuffed with deer antlers
and hanging puppets

like naked bodies
one or the other of us
behind bars

some kind of zoo
I might have loved you
I said

then came the screaming man
with a crushed hand
I took a brown bag

of leftover potato chips
home to my husband's
children


3. OCTOPUS


Your see-through faces
have run together like watercolor
on oatmeal pages
all my lovers buried alive

I never said goodbye
never knew how
I stored you up together instead
in some cluttered attic

inside my head
in a brown box rough with dust
and tied with barbed wire
for ribbons

one bound creature
of several shadowed hearts
and many limbs
all your vanished words

your brown eyes or blue eyes
all of you locked
together
like a bunch of

mad or hunchbacked uncles
hidden away
who grind their teeth
in my sleep