i had a dream last night that a crush of mine met me in this old log cabin somewhere out in the woods. i was staying there by myself and he drove up on his own to surprise me. it was coming on night and i was in the bedroom making the bed with those old flannel sleeping bags everyone had in the 70s - you know the ones, stuffed with feathers and heavy and the inside fabric had sepia cowboy scenes on it? i know you know. anyway, he walked in and i was all surprised and tickled by his appearance. he pulled out this gorgeous underbust corset and asked permission to lace me up into it. i said yes. it was incredibly erotic, feeling the boning and jacquard fabric close in tighter and tighter around my rib cage and back and under my breasts; the sound the laces made as he yanked them through their grommets.

dearest,

i woke up with the words, "stop shouting," mummering from my lips and my hand patting the part of the bed where you'd been only moments before - at least as i dreamed it. as i dreamed streamers of sparrows drifting past the bedroom windows, as i dreamed flickering dawnlight through ragged earthtone wings, shadows over our faces slack with lovemaking, through your voice calling for me down a long hallway, or over the high frequency flightbeats against glass.

it was weird, and i should have known it was a dream, because while your face was above me, lost in our passion, i could hear you were yelling for me from some distant dreamplace of your own. a place i know pretty well as i've been there too. i've hung around in the coppery dusk and watched portals throb open and swell closed and the parades of memories and fantasies striding by; alternately ignoring me and pursuing me as packs of wild dogs down alley ways. they aren't vicious, just hungry, but they frighten me anyway.

you know your voice carries subsonically. it sounded like that whooshing noise you get when you open the door on an airplane midflight. like they do sometimes in the movies. sucking the wind out of my lungs, dragging my hair violently over my face, pulling on me so hard i needed to hang on to rough upholstery to avoid been yanked into the void. it sounded like you were saying my name backwards but you weren't. maybe you'd recorded it backwards, and practiced saying it that way over and over again until you got the beat right, until you got the counterintuitive breathing right, until you knew my secret self both ways. all ways. always.

anyway, this note is just to say, i didn't like waking up with your dream-shouting for me echoing in my ears only to find you were not beside me where my dream promised you would be. so why don't you just tell me what you were trying to say, right now, in the light of consciousness and day? if it's so important. if you must try so hard.

all my everything,
~c

you're the red beans in my rice
you're the foster in my bananas

rainfallout, steamin
made love after we slept in
found a child
home sick from school
and taught him how to make skillet cornbread

you're the balsamic in my vinagrette
you're the hot oil to my beet chip

warmbelly, rumdrink
promise of friends to come
found them
right when they were leavin
and they taught me how to say goodbye

i dreamed my uterus began to hemmorhage while misha and i were hiking through this big golden field. it happened so quickly. i went from being mildly embarassed about the gush of blood from between my legs to totally lightheaded and dizzy and fainting in an instant. i fell first to my knees, then laid quietly down on my side and started to silently weep. misha was clutching my hand, both our fists bloody, calling out for help into his cell phone, but i was dying. i closed my eyes. it got dark.

then i dreamed i snuck into my neighbour's basement and found a small airplane that would fit one person. i hauled it outside and up onto the roof and started it up, not really believing i was going to do this. i climbed in with the engine revving. it was present day, it was snowing, i wanted to fly through the night snow and look at xmas lights on people's houses. i got a few blocks and became afraid of how high, and alone, i was. i turned the plane back and was overcome with exhaustion much like i have been in the last week and started to fall asleep at the wheel. i woke up after i had crashed the little plane right outside the neighbour's door. they started to come out, and i had to struggle and stumble up out of the plane quickly so that they wouldn't see me in it, and i wouldn't be held accountable for all the damage i did. i tried to struggle into the house but misha had filled the entire outdoor walkway and front hall with all manner of bright xmas decorations and lights and music and i was tripping on cords and neon santas. i finally stumbled through and into the living room and fell onto the couch to sleep, while i heard the neighbour shout about the plane. i felt ok, though, like i knew i'd gotten away with it.

i brought a thermos in my backpack. vodka in creamy hot tea is a drink most wintery. sandwiches in brown paper. you'd laid a worn out mexican-style blanket on the bench that would have been wet if it hadn't been twenty below. we ate and drank quietly, hardly speaking. the sun set on our icy lake picnic, and we dusted off half-frozen crumbs from our sleek parkas and muffle-pat our gloves clean. trees stripped bare revealed inky murders, noisy in the dusk cold. i wondered, but before i was done the thought, our lips melted glossy frost and you tasted like cold metal. the lousy noisy crow was too distracting. i felt my breath heavy with peanut butter and wished i'd brought more vodka tea.

in that short time, your bike lock froze solid to the lamp post so i walked you to the bus stop. you told me off-colour jokes and i saw your handsome face change in the sulphur-tint street lights. i imagined your scarf tied in blunt yarny knots around my wrists or even my breasts. i conjured a dark warm bedroom. i imagined a flannel sheet printed with dusty pink roses and pale green leaves. i felt your bare torso against my back, my hair loose around my shoulders and me languidly moving, lost in the heat between us.

your boots stamped off mud and slush as the bus pulled in, its air brakes groaning. as the door accordian was tapped open by an uninterested driver, you met my eyes with a gaze i couldn't read. "i'm walking, so..." your black glove slid into my blue one and squeezed and i watched our breaths mingle in the early night air. "it was nice," you said back, apologetically. crows landed in the parking lot behind us, quiet now, and the bus driver tapped the air brakes once, impatiently.

"sorry about all that," i shrugged, casting my eyes in the direction of your trapped bicycle, more drunk maybe than i realized.

looking up at the dark sky, "this can't last," you smiled kindly. then meeting my gaze again: "there will be a thaw soon enough."

i dreamed that i was at a "medieval sugar festival"(?) with misha, and i had constructed a very large scale model of a castle using nothing but hardened sugar. it was taller than me and wider than my living room and very detailed. i was very proud of it. after it was finished and on display, misha and i were put on "security detail" and had to walk thorugh the grounds and the building the fest was being held on/in. we split up for a bit and when i returned to admire my sugar castle again, i found misha had, with the help of several other people, pushed it outdoors into the rain and puddles, and it was slowly melting away into nothingness. i got very upset and demanded to know why he'd permitted people to do that to my creation. his answer was that a couple of tons of new sugar had just been delivered and they were making way for the building of an actual life-size replica of a medieval castle that would put mine to shame. i was furious and offended and left in a huff.

i was patroling the playground then and found a very tall (i'm talking, seven feet) teenaged boy picking on younger children there. i tried to kick him off the playground using the threat of finding his parents and telling them, but he kept ignoring me and continuing to push down and hurt other smaller kids. as he climbed up onto a set of monkey bars i grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him down hard. this had the consequence of him smacking his head on the metal bars, knocking him unconcious. as i realized what i'd done i felt someone tap me on the shoulder and turned around to find myself staring into the stomach of a giantess. she stood around ten feet high and had a miserable chunky manly face and dry straw-like hair. i realized in a moment that she had to have been his mother and she didn't look too happy about the fact that i'd K.O.'ed him. i tried to explain what had happened and why i'd done what i did, but she wasn't having any of it and pulled her arm back in preparation for socking me. i warned her to back off and that i would call the police if i had to. she wouldn't listen and swung at me. i dodged and kicked at her tree-trunk legs and she stumbled back. i took the opportunity to swing her still-unconcious son over my shoulder and made a dash towards the main building of the festival to recruit help or find a phone. she followed me, though, and caught up. she grabbed my shoulder and i turned around and hit her square in the stomach, once, twice, three times, all while trying to balance the teenager too. she kept coming but was slowed up some. i finally picked up a long piece of wood and told her to back off or i'd hit her with it. she kept coming, kept coming, and so i finally smacked her hard across the face with the wood. that knocked her off her feet and she tumbled down into an "off limits" area where pallets and metal machinary were being stored. i lost sight of her behind some piles of junk and sat down to check to see if the boy was bleeding from his head or anything. just as i laid him down to check him out, she re-appeared, weilding some kind of crazy bladed piece of gardening equipment and shrieking at the top of her lungs, coming straight at me. i stood up, slinging the boy back over my shoulder, and picked up my own piece of metal, though i can't remember exactly what it was. before she even got within striking distance i through the hunk of iron straight at her and it hit her in the head and she was down and out.

i walked over to where she was laying, grabbed her by the collar, and started to drag her and carry the boy out to the road. i hailed a cab and as she started to come to i tossed both of them into the back seat. before she was really with it, i fumbled around into her coat pocket and found her wallet. from it, i removed her ID and put it in my pocket.

"now i know your name and where you live. be thankful i didn't call the cops," i said.

she was pissed but knew she couldn't do anything against me and just stared straight ahead, pulling her giant son in towards her and grimacing. i slammed the taxi door shut and went back to watch my castle melt away completely in the rain.

a full night of totally weird, vivid dreams? is it the full moon?

in them misha was cruel to me, in a very smug and self-satisfied way, as though it didn't matter to him any longer how i felt or thought of him. and he said something so very vile and awful that i resorted to physical violence and tried to beat him up, only of course my blows were weak and ineffectual and he just laughed at me more, in disdain/disgust at my patheticness.

then i was sitting somewhere, a vacant lot, with a wire fence at my back and a big mutt-like dog in my lap and it was talking to me with its mind. and another dog came by, a large black one, and i noticed it was walking funny, walking on the first joint on its front legs, kind of like a gorilla would, and the dog in my lap looked up at me sadly and shook its head saying, "isn't it terrible? i've known him all my life and he's just recently become a complete nutter."

when i got home from this strange exchange i found that one of my neighbours had turned the parking lot outside all our units into a large, fancy outdoor dining space. she had all three of her kids working at laying down cloth serviettes and fine silverware. i said, "what's going on? what are you doing?" she said, "it's a community fundraiser. dinner is $40 a plate. will you join us?" "what are you serving?" "tubes," she said, "more and more tubes." and i had a dream flashback to the vacant lot where i'd been sitting with the dogs and remembered seeing thousands of discarded rubber tubes of varying lengths laying in the grass. the thought of eating them was wholly unappetizing and so i declined. the look she gave me was withering and i realized that my gastronomic snobbery was getting me nowhere with my neighbours.

i conjure morning:
dark sky, slatted breath, distant
highways calling you.
your torn hand catches
smoke wisping up from my eyes:
product of dream fires.
blanket-scented love
pressed deep into downy soil.
rainy eyelashes
tremble as blossoms
tremble in ocean's winter:
crags, sponge moss, you, me.

it's not that you can't have me...it's that you don't get me.

listen.
i laid bare petals in packages
secretly delivered by motorcade.
and i shivered as you crawled through
bodybombs
and witmissles (whet whistles)
testing your mettle and disregarding mine.
hey, look, now.
shameless and guilty
i gifted you alone in the trees.
shattered sunlight fallen on the water
with pieces of me in your mouth
i watched you struggle
and wondered at my own fight.
well, come on. you know that
i dug deep to pull all that out:
rabbits from silk hats and flowers from dust
but the further i open
it seems the harder you shut.
so. enh, and shrug.
i drift lazily away back from where i came
something drowned, that you dreamed.
not the wet creature
you found muddy and fearsome
on the shore.
in your lap,
by the shore.

last night me and simon pegg were crushing out on each other, and when he saw i'd gotten an email from ivan reitman asking me out on a date, he got super jealous and started to sulk. he was inconsolable, believing that i was going to "run off with that rich old twat, just because he said he might introduce you to dan aykroyd".

oh simon. i fancy you much more than reitman...though the aykroyd thing...well. anyway. don't worry, i won't leave you, baby.