Everything is
a shark, moving for a living.
The day you froze, place lost
its room and time lost
its patience, only to snatch
you out of space. You translated
into perpetual light, unseen
like the gaps found
between film’s still frames, dead
but chasing the unborn.
Here in this nowhere, you linger
never and always, spread
into everything and nothing,
as only spirit stops.
The Earth is an old dog’s tennis ball, chewed
up and used up with joy,
which is why I don’t care for saving
the world. When I’m done I’ll lob
it out for the next kids to gnaw
as they’re teething,
because the Earth craves
our lives’ intimate caress, willing
to wear our footprints as laugh lines. Love leaves
marks, love rarely tames
the force of her nature, and nature’s force is wild
at our doors. She gulps at our wells and finishes
us all, while ever offering
her breast to my mouth. So I shamelessly spread
open her chasms and bring her to gasp,
for I live atop her, and the untouched
are already forgotten.
We dream the world into being. I believe this is a deep truth, and I believe there is something magical to be found in lucid dreaming.
Knowledge and imagination swirl and caress each other teasingly. In the waking world, one can know for certain that one is imagining some wondrous fantasy, but one cannot, we are told, manifest one’s imagination into life. In the dream world, one can imagine that they know something is “really happening”, but one cannot quite control one’s imagination to manifest what one wants.
Yet in lucid dreaming one knows they are imagining, and one can imagine anything they wish, manifesting it before their eyes in all the true-to-life reality-mimicking quality that dreams provide. I think, perhaps, this suggests that there is a kind of waking state of fantastical knowing which is the opposite of lucid dreaming and which holds all the manifesting power of the latter.
Lucid dreaming could, then, be a powerful to tool in learning the most powerful skill of them all: manifesting reality.
Learning lucid dreaming is more than merely recognizing that one is dreaming, but the ability to recognize a dream from reality is the first step. I myself have a few clues that tell me if I am dreaming (yours may be different). The first clue is the obvious fantasy of a dream. In a dream where I encountered a tornado, I knew it was a dream when I then saw five more all around me. It’s the improbable things that tell me I’m probably dreaming.
The second clue is my lack of co-ordination or ability to make things happen in a dream. In a dream I find it impossible to hit the right buttons on a phone, for instance, or carry out other simple functions. I fumble about, unable to act on the world.
The third clue is a bit more subtle. If I find myself trying to decide, in a dream, if I am indeed dreaming — I probably am! Yet still there have been times when I knew for sure I was awake, only to wake up. The point is that if I’m questioning it at all, or making a decision about my state of wakefulness, I am likely in fact dreaming.
Knowing these facts may help me to take things a step further: to know I am dreaming and stay within the dream, imagining a world before my sleeping eyes that bends to my will.
We’re freezing
rain, you and I, running
down streets, quicksilvering
our way between blocks of time.
You won’t betray
me if you freeze faster; even stone will melt
and reform, re-imagined
as everything fabricates
its reality from nothing, ripping
fantasy from the headlines. We’re dreams woken
to being, you and I, we’re air that grows
frost on blades of grass, we’re
one frame in a mystery film, captured
for a spell. When our photos fade
and all we know releases
back into imagination’s wilds, we’ll play
with the unborn who pass
away into life, then return
in a simple change of state. We’ll meet
as trees, you and I, flowing
like rivers when no one is looking,
as our every wish condenses
into truth.
I want an antithing
like a cigarette, want to mouth
it while I verb.
But I’m not doing
anything, so I start to think
about the resolution of the eye, wonder
if another instrument could glimpse
the slits of space between grains
of one thing and the next. Inhale
that one for your reward. But antithings are flighty
if they’re anything at all, and now I’m left
with nothing — I’m not doing
anything again — so I start to think
about how time isn’t. Isn’t that a kick
in the head? But now I have to think
time is a thing that animals do,
and fuck, I want to antido
it all, I want an antithing
that will last. My brain’s
funny, my senses are bent
into modern art, that’s all I get for trying
too hard. What a giggle,
the men who think the universe plays
bumper cars and doesn’t bleed
from thought to thing,
from mystery to knowledge. Fuck,
all I antido is nothing.
Suddenly I was air. Skinned, sublimated
like mist lifting from a frozen stream, I watched
you rape a river.
My consciousness hung
on a hairsbreadth chain, barely anchored
to time and life. Blood roared
as it pushed in and fell
back, becoming the sound of absence, cricket-song
superimposed on deep space’s silence. The stars twisted
and staying put took effort. I made myself
willing to watch you thrash and spasm
in my river, while I mouthed
a lullaby like a hook. Hush.
Endure.
Then something snapped, then something exited, and it pulled
me as violently as the Earth pulls lightning
towards its own heart. I was on my back, eyes open,
spread over stones.
Submission — to what, I don’t know —
condensed in me, flipping
like a fish soon out of water. I lifted
up a shaking hand, I pressed
it to my chest, and I claimed
myself, again, as my own.
Where Spirit Stops 