In Dreams

I had the most tedious dream last night

It was a nice break from the livid folks who usually squat in the abandoned, rotting lofts my

subconscious locks away

A nice break from the men and women who peel back layers of skin and thick, greasy

subcutaneous fat just to put it all back in place or insert unripe melons beneath their ass cheeks in some sort of rural plastic surgery

Before jackhammering at each other in an orgy of flapping tissues

It was a nice break from the stretching dusty road lined with countless emaciated people,
            each with a wooden box full of coin and trinkets, begging for food as my family and
            I pass them by,

Leading up to a great arabesque city, terrace upon terrace stacked with buildings looming
            out of the yellow desert atop a mountain of rock baked brown by the sun

In the off-level buildings of that city I watch generations of my family live and die, myself

amongst the first inheritors, turning into but an observer from a loft in the blue desert sky upon my passing

The only other spectator to the dwindling of the family tree as we bred ourselves down to

nothing was a dog gifted with longevity greater than our individual epochs

He saw as we passed the tablet down and amongst each other, squabbling over how to and
            who should use the cryptic gray thing

And you I saw, off to the side and ephemeral with a grace of lips and shock of hair that bely
            your hold on the entire situation

            * * * * *

In this dream, though, I had a whiteboard on which I’d drawn a simple figure’s outline in green

Then blue, then red— for each time I drew, the beginning faded by the time I reached the end

So I tried again with a different color every time, meticulously stroke by stroke

Just to find that I was always left with a whiteboard empty if I didn’t try to fill it again