dreamed for the first time in nine days just now but i still don't know if the ticking sounds behind my left ear are dripping water or the movements of insects when i'm getting up to go twist-face versions of fathers and old lovers come out of the corners to make up an instant in the periphery. my mind puts it on the table and considers the impossibility of it. by the time i really look at the person they've grown a face of their own and yes there was a resemblance but it's nothing uncanny really don't worry everything is normal and gleaming with habitude the back door of the dark house we've been stumbling through has been shown to not exist. the hallway behind the kitchen where it should be turns back every time to the living room where you hear a knock on the door. the knock is always different but its always a secret knock and every time it's the same person because at some point in the past the color with people was in secret handshakes

i don't wanna fight the war of boys and girls anymore the war of girls and boys doesn't turn me on anymore i'll play jim if you play huckleberry finn the sun comes down and no one talks to me the perfect bodies of the children run again and again through the sprinkler for reasons you forgot their nipples are two more beads of water on translucent chests the girls have not gotten breasts but the boys already imitate their belligerent dads you see the tiny waving arms and instantly picture the snap of the young bones this is not cruelty just an instinct. i grow tired of the war between girls and boys the war of girls and boys doesnt do it like before i'll play jim if you play huck finn

..

one of the breastless ones watches the antics of the other sex and notices the violence of the rest of her life she walks back to the middle class hypocrisy of her mother's love with the carnal images boiling quietly in her reptilian brain. a motorcycle screams insanely by and no one looks up. surprises do not exist. the identity of the one behind the door in the dark house has always been known. the perpetuity of your father's hated aspects in yourself appears inevitable as the slow displacement of a glass of water into the air of a dry room. the kids throw little explosives at the ground and squeal because destruction without consequence is bliss they burn the crawling ants with their glasses and squeal at their own strength they know they manifest the power of nature they know there is no difference between curiosity and pleasure

...so you go into the other room to turn off the television. nude women ride horses across the screen, their parts covered by stray leaves. in their alien pose there is the intimation of a question about our own dementia. you know this is your first time seeing this but you know the woman's name and wish you could say it aloud instead your at the bus stop one more time. women condemn their clocks (ptsst!) and say "nothin" . when the bus comes she throws up her hands to the driver and wears a leopard print dress. I can see myself in her sunglasses and these days that dream of ambulatory distress has infected my waking body. I tell myself some bullshit line about non-doing and put another fake starting point into my life like a blank street sign i recall that lack is a language itself but know that when i've learned it i'll still have to choose left or right which i could have done a long time ago one way always led to nauseous memory and the other to the short time of year when the lightening bugs come out. you would gather them in a jelly jar the way any other kid would you could kill them when they glowed to paint your face with their golden blood. inside you grandparents are shooting the shit with friends whose names you've forgotten. they remember yours because you looked at them until you didn't want to anymore and then stopped, as any kid would and they felt ashamed as i always do for having grown up. you go outside and back to the dreaming about hiding spots and the breach over and over of the little purple corner that you've found and stowed yourself away in. (I don't remember my childhood because i never left it, i don't remember how i got here because i've always been warm like now)