The weird Wes Anderson-themed dream

I opened a bag of sunchips that mom had bought at a grocery store in some town I didn't recognize. She had her grocery bags all hung out on her car; she said that it was quicker that way because she could just set it up first and then bring out the shopping cart and fill them all up. But she chastised me for opening and eating the sunchips, because the bag was apparently for the bishopric. I told her I would go in and buy her a new bag (even though I hadn't eaten the first).

...

At a house that Amy's aunt Debrah owned: She had built this massive waterpark virtually in her own backyard. Joey was already there; he jumped off the second or third level and into a big pool. So I went up there to join him, but there was a huge line and gathering of not-the-most-savory of people. There were some African-Americans who wanted to jump me but then said to each other--"no n_g_e_s" (fill in the blanks yourselves, and note: I'm not racist at all, I'm just tellin it like it was). There were some younger boys who jumped in tandem. Satya was there too and for some reason he jumped naked, however his jump was weak and he seemed to be lacking the correct set of genitalia. Weird. But I wanted to use the diving board like some of the others--it looked the most fun.

Then there was a Bill Murray part--where we must have been in some Wes Anderson film--he was wearing a huge robe with some insignia on it and he wanted to jump in. Finally he disrobed and jumped in, but under the robe he had huge manboobs and was a lot bigger than he normally seems. But he jumped in anyway. Then there were all these weird glove/hand type things that were trying to steal a bottle of lotion that Bill had been carrying. I jumped in and wrestled with them. Bill just disappeared, but at the end I barely made off with the lotion by trying to sneak it down my own sleeve (I was wearing sleeves?)--the trick didn't work very well but somehow I got it anyway.

There was another part to this story where there were two girls who were attractive and one apparently was a Gwyneth-Paltrow-in-The-Royal-Tenenbaums type (there's a Wes Anderson theme here), but she knew she was hot and always wanted other guys to like her. Even though Amy was with me she was trying to play her moves on me--I attempted to avoid her, but she would just do all this weird stuff, and then I realized it all in the end that she was mostly making fun of me. But she really did like me or want my affection, even though she though I was geeky. The end.

How I came to know everything

In a patch of dying grass
sheltered in the shadow of a pine
I sat, back pressed up against the tree.
And in a bed of its green acupuncture--
under the darkening clouds as they gathered overhead--
I began to know everything,
and I dreamt--

...

of the clinking of china,
and my mother's plastic plates that bore sketches
hand-drawn by my brothers and sisters and I--
I had always been secretly ashamed of mine--

of submersing in black water
at midnight in the summer,
the endlessly long wait and subsequent drone
of the one flickering outdoor light

of thin layers of snow on a worn wooden deck
and the burning comfort of a stove fire--
such excitement for a world that was larger then,
than ever imaginable today--

of broken valuables
arranged neatly on my father's dresser for him to fix,
next to his fabled pile of loose change
and the drawers full of batteries and handkerchiefs

...

It was then that I remembered my own dresser at home--
that same, unmistakable dresser--
drawers stuffed with notebooks and socks
a box containing unfinished tasks on top
a stack of torn books and toys in need of glue
and a pile of loose change.

I saw my own son's hand
clutching a treasured quarter,
placing a disassembled flashlight in the stack.

I saw that excitement
for snow and for ocean in the eyes of my daughter,
and the flash of fear as the thunder shook.

I saw crayon drawings turn magnificent,
and height-notches crawl up the wall,
growing taller with time--

And the world spun in place,
grasses grew,
dust collected
and the strands of twinkling lights
on our porch went out one by one.

...

The rain filled my boots with mud
until I awoke with a shiver
and a numbing agony,
as if something had just left me.

And at that moment I knew everything.

Cherry Lane or varicose veins

Newly constructed sidewalks,
overgrown with weeds
like varicose veins--
meant to outlast me.

Imagine them in a century--
my body already absorbed by dirt
or fired to cinders
forty years past--
with its sunned concrete white
faded to a pale mortar grey,
its edges rounded and torn
into crumbled blocks,
the children's initials and handprints
hardly visible anymore.

All of this is meant to outlast me,
us--
transient visitors,
blips on a lifeline,
nuisances.

But the man half-asleep on the steps
of the Community Congregational,
with his head propped
on a pillow of bricks--
he sees little more than Cherry Lane,
he sleeps in little more than fatigues.

And so I ask him,
are you the product of some god
are you the product of my imagination
are you the product of chaos?

To which he replies,
I myself was wondering the same.

Treasure journey

I was left alone at the estate while everyone else was off in search of the treasure. But it seems that the whole boat sank, and they all came floating back on flotsam and little wooden boatshard shrapnel, and no one would tell the location of the chest. There were some golden coins all over the beachy shore, i picked up some and everyone was fighting over them.

Laugh, the devil

The town had been abandoned, for years.

And so I walked its empty streets
and scoured its vacant rooms,
wading through crumbling drywall
and cast-off scrap metal.

If it were Thanksgiving two decades ago,
I would watch at six AM as the cafe awoke
and they wrote the holiday greeting
and turkey specials in chalk calligraphy.

Hotel neon would burst and brighten,
and maids would push restocking carts
through filled parking lots
and streaks of asphalt snow.

But one day they would move the highway.

So doors would latch
and weeds would rise,
windows crack into spiderwebs
and shatter over cinderblock doorstops.

While three miles north
in the shadows made of red canyon handpaint,
earlier villages would be recalled

and the devil would laugh
through blackened hollow eyes,
riding atop his bull.

Crosses

along the rusted railroad tracks
in the salted sands by the desert shrubs
runs a line of poles

wooden crosses
cradling only the telephone wires
and the ravens

each wishes for something grander
more glorious
than the splintering and drying heat of the sun

the small patch of dirt
the trickling electronic voices
the steel and the jackrabbits

I am one of those crosses.
Aren't we all.

No meaning

It was streetside art-type show. Zack was there wearing a dragon shirt that he'd designed; he was going to get the same design tattooed across his whole chest--a wise choice. It really was huge. Another guy had on a different shirt from Zack--it was a Jack Frost shirt that I guess he had modeled for, and Zack commented on how the guy hadn't yet paid for the shirt (even though he was the model, I guess that fact didn't matter).

...

There was a treehouse and I was trying to get down; I needed help and wanted Ben to be my roommate. I was hanging there and this guy swung across like a superhero and got me a ladder to help me down.