Sweet Dreams

By Earl Coleman

Yes, I am entered in this Soap Box Derby with my usual
Rube Goldberg jerry-rigged contraption, chewing gum to plug
the holes up, but no handlebars, no brakes; a downhill racer
without thought of victory, the Boulevard ahead; unrelenting
and precise machnines shoulder me aside as though they all
have even money shots at copping the Grand Prize, while I
am in my race with death below, the Boulevard, thick-trafficked
with its outsize limousines, my slippery slope and I….

Yes, I'm in the bullring, blinded by the sun, the sand, in that chiaroscuro
of the golden light and purpling shade of afternoon. I feel the clutch of
danger, fear there will be blood, my own. The Paso Doblé, cries "Olé, olé".
Each Carmen wears a vivid rose behind the ear. Packed stadium and I am —
I am who? — the bull with horns against a sword, baffled, blind, a ribboned
pique stuck in my back to make me mad? Am I the matdor? — without my cape,
my sword cemented in its sheath? The gamblers, mob are grown delirous with
some poor creature's death to come, it doesn't matter whose….

Yes, like Bigger Thomas I am in the basement of my shame, at furnace door,
outsider, tilted toward some desperate, mad act, menace to society, the evidence
of my horrific deeds now naked to the eye, the cherry red of embers like a pool
of blood seeps down to black biuminous below, as dark as everything I've done,
this skeletal construction like a schoolroom dummy, propped as though to speak
my name and bony-finger me, and I am panicked, cannot bolt or think, appalled
at this new circumtance, one of a string, for fate and I are intertwined inside this
fait accompli, my handiwork will out…..

Yes, I bridle at this latest dream in which I've opened my valises, all the necessaries
in slots a propos, directions on the top for when and where I am to pick my Ellen up
from Kennedy. And yes, I've been here too. No ordinary room, but peopled and in moments, as in negative capablity which Keats explores, taking not an action,
I'm in disarray, directionsless, everything at odds and ends. My feelings spill into
the dream. I'm angry, bored, disheartened by this tapestry, this endless loop I weave,
the bloody sameness; monks go blind from copying kilometers of indulgences, nuns from weaving infinite designs for some high-placed one they will never see — will I see mine?

Double-visioned, I am in the dream, and yet observer, scholar."Help", I shout in my despair, frustration, "I'm in the Labyrinth and need a fucking spool. How can I quit this place, this prison where I've sentenced, booked myself to die of words. Then yes, inside the dream itself I'm face to face at last with him, my doppelganger, when I needed Ariadne and her magic thread. He's naked, wears a sneer. "Hey, you're the solver, teacher. Brought right down to it you snivel like an amateur. I had expected more of you. I don't have still another hundred years to hang around with you, throwing you a million clues which you're too slow to grasp. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and learn to cope." I wake and gasp.