Category: New Poems: workings and beginnings.

What a strange night of dreams
Most seem to be related to the restaurant
But the images were all over the place
But no cooking or any service stuff.
There was trying to find a good parking place
Early in the morning 
When the lot was empty
So I could get out easy
When everybody was leaving.
Or where to put my knife roll
When I left so no one would take my knives.
or climbing up to the top of a storage shelf
To get some towels 
That had been hidden
Cause there weren’t any in the kitchen
To find out 
They were gone
And had been replaced 
With paper towels

Another image
Was me talking with Julie
One of our hostesses at the hosted stand
About fish
Mostly the migratory habits of salmon.

The last thing was 
when I woke up this was scribbled on a piece of paper by my head.

-my brother sends me something ever ten days. He smiled
-for you I’ll just say Ferrell. Send me a little extra for my friend.

We look at the Greek tragedies 
And I think Shit I got poems long than that.

What that means
I have no idea.

I pulled her hair back,
gripping her by the elbow to steady her
as she puked over the staircase railing.
In between her heaves,
she explained how her father had pitied those at war.
“He was a true pacifist. He’d never fight,”
Sirens went off in the distance.
“and he never got angry.”
Some explosions sounded.
I wanted to explain to her
even Jesus and Buddha got mad at times;
but now wasn’t the time.
As people started yelling fire,
I helped her down the rest of the stairs,
pushed the bar on the exit door;
light and smoke filtered into the air;
we walked out of the building
and went to a bench that rested under a tree.
We could see the fire trucks
and their red lights dimly through the smoke.
As we sat down, she remarked.
‘I think I’m paying for those bread sticks.’

I don’t remember much of the back story
or really why I at the university that I was at
or why I was walking through the building thhat I was.
but I walked into a class that was finishing
an exam
there was a lithe brunette hair woman teacher
and I stopped
with my back pack on my shoulder
and I saw she was in some distress

“are you alright?”

at first she was defensive
than she
i guess saw the sincerity on my face.
and told me.

damn its slipping.
but to put the the whole thing in a package
was we talked
and we got into god
it seemed
she had been a Catholic
all her life she had gone to church
and she had stopped
and she was bothered

and I
well I as i told her I got my self baptized when I was eight
never really went to church much after that
but I studied all religions
believed all were the same god.
and she just began
breaking down and crying
I held her
while all her students just looked on
it was OK.
and then she went blind.

“I can’t see”

was what she kept repeating.
I told her calm down.
and look into herself
in her minds eye
don’t worry about what the texts said.

what did she see
I can’t tell you
but she calmed down.
kissed me,
and thanked me
told me she could see again.
and just held me
asking me not to let go.
so we sat there on the floor
with her sleeping bag and book
holding one another.

that’s when i woke up
with my keyboard beside my head on the floor.

now after I typed this
little facts start coming to my mind.
she was teaching a anthropology class.
it was a night class.
I don’t know why they all had their sleeping bags.
the class number was 477.
she had a little note grasped in her hand
it was where she wrote her poetry.
i’m not sure any more if she was Catholic,
but that just that she went to church ever since she was a child.

its almost gone,
just her out of focus face
and thee smell of her perfume.
and now that is slipping away to.