Self-Interview

(Copy pasted from reviews, commentaries blog. Early genesis of the Reynolds & Midway  poems. 12.2004)

I.

Open the curtains, darkness, flip switches,

darkness; darkness so thick it hurts
there. In that here. An abyss.
You stumble blindly through the house
you grew up in. Yes. Always.
But you left years ago. Did you feel
No. I never felt completely secure there.
Alright, ask. The cause of all that?
How many times can I say it, yes yes yes.
Confined, lazy. All of those,
all at once. Absolutely no reason. But you
Absolutely no reason, because I could have
changed everything. I had no strength.
Now look out the window to the left
past the casements which I mentioned
many times. Old hunting cabin Dad
made over, no closets, frames put up
but never finished, had my own bed,
double-wide. You were about to describe
the window. Not describe. Look out of.

Trees with soldiers in them. Remember now

these are dreams. My brother and I
would lay on the bed with invisible rifles
and pick them off, one by one they'd drop
thump thump on the ground, roll down
the slope of the hill like boulders.
You killed them. They weren't really there.
But in the dreams I have now, those trees
are dark and breed darkness, multiply
and weave darkness upon darkness,
in the winds outside the window they sway,
like monsters. Leviathans. Sure, I like that.
Behemoths, more like, land-locked.

But it's every night, or every other.

The family is out, the cars are gone.
It's night time. Bang. Black-out. Always
the same. Silver horn of panic. Bile
in the throat. No lights. Paw under shades,
mildewy shades, can't find the switch.
Relax. Can't. It's always the same. TV
pops off, zoomph, black. No lights. I know,
the power goes out, but in the dreams
I don't realize. I mean, I don't make
the connection. It's not that the power
is out, it's that all of the bulbs give
up the ghost, all at once. Just my luck
kind of thoughts. You feel persecuted?
Victim of bad luck? Last one. Not so first.
Bad luck, bad juju. Or haunted? God, yes.
You know I don't believe in the supernatural.
Not at all? No. But I'm afraid of ghosts.
Hear me out. I didn't mean to laugh.

II.

Towns I've never seen, on the bright edges

of cities no maps take note of. Gothams.
But these are real towns, full of teens
in convertibles tearing down boulevards,
not the teens I knew, but I'm stuck with them.
Handsome devils all, with perfect girls,
never lost, never abandoned. How do you
know they are not the ones you went with?
I don't recognize them, and I don't like them.
Can we move on? No. Like I said, cruising.
Finding parties to which I'm not invited.
Finding a girl. Losing the girl. Chasing her
through labyrinths, crowds always smothering her,
snuffing her like a taper. I found my wife kneeling
by a divan, giving some quarterback
a hand-job. About eight times my size it was, in
her tiny hand, tattooed, with buttons, levers,
bells and whistles. I'd been given the standard
issue. She seemed delighted. Who wouldn't be?

Waterfall. Pardon? Waterfall. Lights on a hill

in a ring, a sheer drop, tree roots hanging,
and a waterfall. They climbed through it,
brave, undaunted. I couldn't go through. I
could never get to the other side. Slopes. Floors
sloped. Driveways at impossible angles,
red-tiled floors I'm slated to mop, steep. Water
related to loss? Water related to inadequacy?
Of course. I'm afraid of water. I can't swim.
Tidal waves, submarines, collossal vessels,
everyone's smiling. A day at the f#$*ing beach.
Tanned, smiling. When my toes can't touch bottom
I'm a dead man. And then they dive:
From cliffs to slender, uprising columns
of stone. They somersault, swandive, jack-knife,
hundreds of feet, and always land upright, dead-
center. Balance, no worries. Turn and dive a hundred
feet lower, onto a narrower platform. Then they
look up dot-size and beckon with peachy arms.
They don't understand your fear? No, and
why should they? It's so damned easy for them.

III.

Looked for C-wing, but wound up

in cellars, or out side doors I never knew
were there. That were not there.
Rows of blue lockers went on and on
ad infinitum, an illusion, done with mirrors.
How would I find mine, nothing
I had was there, I'd long since forgotten
the combinations. A pink flimsy paper
with my classes clutched in hand,
no books. No familiar faces.
Hallways sloped like irregular hills
and at their mysterious ends small white
holes of light, mold, rot, dead teachers.
Biology lab, test tubes, bunson burners,
students I've seen full grown at gas-stations.
C-wing senior homeroom, for the thousandth
time, elusive door, flag and book-stink.
No I have not done the assignment. I did not
know of the assignment. Let's go back to the
cellars was it? Bathrooms, but deep down,
low ceilings, pots with floaties, paper
wadded in corners. No stall doors and where
there are doors, they don't function, won't lock.
The place is usually the same, not much
changes, and it's not so much fear as shame.
Where is that g-ddamm room, the seven
or eight searches between bells. Mile-long
corridors boiling with impossible girls.
In the back of my dreaming mind I think
I still don't give a damn, can't find the door.

Late 2004