Dream:

I’m on a train that’s plowing snow around a mountain pass. The train stops so the passengers can see the landscape. The conductor has us all climb on top of the train, but we aren’t tall enough to see from this perspective. Suddenly the train cars are stacked up on top of one another. He tells us to climb higher. We climb the cars but it’s getting more difficult. The conductor finally tells us, “if you can’t see the beauty, climb higher”. My hands are throbbing, my arms are sore and I can barely pull myself up, but I continue to climb.

at 6 am I hear the roofer’s nail gun
coughing echoes like a pulse
and I think to myself
“is this how a song is formed?”
so many construction sounds
and cars buzzing
over coffee
and the lyricist begins to conjecture
in my midnight gleams
an unconscious title or lyric
dematerializes
like a brushstroke in reverse
my mind has become
deleterious and elusive—like a spider’s web
I keep forgetting names
—the nailing on the roof—
somewhere
a whisper to the forehead
or a baby’s midnight headbutt
the hammers flung like Koopas
unilaterally yet without direction
in my view of remote places
I see my car with the hood up
the constipated streets and zombified highways
the afternoon lurch
all the faces
seem out of tune