I'm a schoolkid in the future who finds an ancient book the censors somehow missed...
My family has a hidden gene for incest--and griffins.
When I bring the family skeleton from the closet...
CAUTION: RAPE, INCEST
In the cathedral, before the nation, I solemnly crown someone with my own detached head...
My neighborhood becomes a Huck Finn Eden after global warming turns it into a tropical island...
CAUTION: NUDITY, AMBITOPIA
In the future, books morph as they crawl round the web, till just the popular bits are left...
CAUTION: YOU TOO COULD BE CENSORED
While we’re at work, Blind Ancestors come smash up our homes...
and we all see zombie vandal relatives as normal...
Spies kidnap a girl and move her soul into a madwoman's body.
Can she survive? Recover? Thrive? The TV dance show helps...
I search for family skeletons, but then a talking plant on TV inspires me to seek the sun and fly free.
But certain velociraptors and barbarian swordswomen object...
CAUTION: DUELS, FISH ABUSE, THE F-WORD
At last my girlfriend and I manage to peel off the Brown Dress of Shame, and ...
CAUTION: SEXUAL HEALING
Can our interspecies family survive? Our very instincts clash around solitude/boundaries, sex and incest
CAUTION: SEX, INCEST, REPRESSION/DENIAL
I meet a tragic heroine--great heart, rotten luck. But I open her magic sword and find a bad chip...
Why did I sign on as a crewman on the Cheapship, a freighter
that's falling apart? And yes, I do mean that literally...
I realize a bone is protruding between my left armpit and breast. I put Maria's hand on my breast and
ask her to feel the bone. But no one grasps what it really is--something sticking out from my heart...
What my home town will become, if you fools keep burning gas and spewing CO2...
I'm in the Mideast. No wonder it's a war zone--it's a vast pit BUILT for war!
But a spiral stair leads slowly out, to...
I model with ten blonde clones. They want to be seen as individuals, so it's their last fashion show before...
I sought a dream of Helpers. But rather than give me gifts, they gave me a daunting challenge...
One of the Time Vaults has opened. That means a historical crisis is at hand. Guess who gets to go in...
I'm an Asian kid in Pacifica, California. I offer my annoying parents for sale on Craigslist. Enter a cop...
A weird little forest god bred me from an ordinary deer into a creature who can
almost pass for human. But World War 2 killed my god, and now I'm growing into...
CAUTION: NUDITY, CROSSBREEDING
On the Euphrates, a monstrous crocodile eats all his kin. But when a winged ship appears, he feigns remorse...
I always wrote some letters strangely--my 'd' was nearly illegible. So I set out to retrain my deep motor skills...
I meet a nice werewolf in a hall of past-life junk, so sharp and rusty we dare not play...
Body after body is peeled away revealing truth inside truth...
CAUTION: GROTESQUE
Our Appalachian town revolts against fundamentalists, but brainwashing takes time to undo...
CAUTION: SEX AND INJUSTICE
I couldn't find Mrs. B and feared she was suicidal. But I heard my late mother say "She's in that hotel..."
I'm actress Nicole Kidman, clinging to the dome of City Hall like King Kong, ripping it to shreds! Why?
CAUTION: VANDALISM, REVERSE SEXISM, EXHIBITIONISM
A mob chases me chanting "Lyin' Wayan!" I get dizzy, fall off a bridge, and wake. Then comes REAL trouble!
CAUTION: FATAL FALL
A ghost complains Herdis's grandma bothers her. Herdis wakes, tells Grandma, and they dig up the floor to find...
A dragon's daughter seeking her inheritance defies a sneaky dragon-realtor out to own the world...
An economist gets a job as a dragon guarding a data-treasure.
Heroes plot to slay him, but I trust the dragon more than the heroes...
In Old Palmyra, I stumble on a dragon-hoard. Wizards and caliphs hunt me--how to get out
of town? Magic carpet? No. I put on a brown coat, borrow a delivery bike, and slowly pedal...
My children ask me to tell our family history, up to the death of their mother. I wake to find
myself single, my late wife alive but married to another, and my beloved children, phantoms...
CAUTION: 19TH-CENTURY LOGORRHEA
I'm in Hell. No fire, no guilt. Just endless forests under the moon. My mother paints
endlessly but never gets it right. A sunny day, but I can't go out to play. Cut off...
CAUTION: DEPRESSION
What Earth will look like 1000 years from now, with doubled CO2, flooded coasts and melted poles...
CAUTION: CALLS GEORGE W. BUSH A BIG FAT LIAR
His literary afterlife was just six inches of shelf space. But then friends brought more, trucks more, til I slid down hills of paper...
CAUTION: DEATH'S AFTERMATH
I'm Queen Elizabeth I, but I made a mistake--focused too much on art and culture.
Now, plotters who I overlooked smash in my bedroom door. I snatch a vial of poison...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE REFLECTS REALITY
I signed a prenatal agreement for weird, uneven luck to turn my life toward art and spirit.
I want to broaden it, but I've lost the contract! So my spirit wife Silky sets out to find it...
Goaded by a green spirit of envy, an Ice Age sorceror kidnaps Adam's Eve, arresting human evolution...
Money, power, race and gender stifle my working friends less than hierarchical structures...
I dream my son the writer's living above our old family store, the one that failed in the Depression...
I was a 30ish woman discovering that my chronic pelvic inflammation was from childhood molestation...
CAUTION: MOLESTATION IN DREAM-PAST
The Europeans have another great war, killing off their men. Will that break the cycle of violence? Like a...
1: I visit Elrond and Bilbo in Elvenhome, but overthinking traps me in a timeloop;
2: Elrond says he renounces seriousness for joy, and plans a great, inclusive party;
3: I feel unworthy, but set out on a desert quest with Elrond's young apprentice;
4: I meet joyful, drunken, singing elves but hide in a tree, too shy to join in;
5: I meet a nervous elven singer and a dolphin trapped in a tiny pool in my bedroom...
My Cambodian village was burned, my family murdered. At 12,
I was the oldest survivor; I led a band of kids to the border...
My car's idling too fast. After hours of diagnosis, I notice a foot's on the gas! But not my foot...
I started life as twins, but slowly we fused. I still have four eyes, though. Then, one day...
The goddess of the Cult of Clutter catches a little thief, and tastes her to see if she's worthy...
A famous inventor is descended from foxes. Their faces teach me something about beauty and character...
After a trip to a failing mall, an old Grateful Dead song haunts my dreams. Mall, song; opposite political poles...
CAUTION: HIPPIE/JEFFERSONIAN DEISM
I live in a haunted house where ghosts push you to suicide. But they're as tired of it as I am...
My parents pray for my success, and arrange a great learning opportunity for me. Really.
After 25 years I land on my native island of Wyre, to touch an ancient clay figurine, who grows young and wakes...
I find myself sketching the slope of progress up to the coming singularity, and notice a hidden stability...
A biracial girl doubts her own heritage; a human friend has to confirm the obvious. So what am I blind to?
Nabokov's uncle left him a fortune but the Revolution took it. He dreamed his uncle said "I shall return to you as
Harry & Kuvyrkin." 40 years later filmmakers Harris & Kubrick paid Nabokov a fortune for the rights to Lolita...
I bear a Ring of Power meant to corrupt me. I cleansed it, at a cost, but can't wield it till I've read its spell...
I change sex to infiltrate a sinister castle, unaware its Lord can spot a shapeshifter--being one himself...
CAUTION: A DISTURBING BEDSIDE MANOR. I MEAN, MANNER.
I'm a misfit--a mortal in an immortal world. Then I meet a girl with an unpredictable illness...
A single dad loves his daughter, but is so pathologically cheap he's teaching her an unintended lesson...
CAUTION: CHILD NEGLECT
James Hillman and my own experience suggest we enter life with an agenda. But what if our goals are sick?
I'm a hobbit woman in Los Angeles, hiding a magic weapon
from Sauron. No, not THAT weapon. The wishing-bucket...
The Goddess's harp, that calls in the seasons, just passed on. But the new harper has a shocking admission...
I'm back in the 19th century, learning that horse breeders cross-bred
more than the public thinks. One suggests I look hard in the mirror...
CAUTION: UNSEEMLY SENATORIAL DISCOURSE
I fight to save a nest of 50,000 eggs that'll hatch... psychics!
But my friends want to exterminate them! Who's wrong here?
As my grandmother is dying, I have a dream about what really went on in her house...
CAUTION: CHILD SLAVERY
A disowned heiress and I sneak onto the family estate, but they'll go pretty far to hide their skeletons...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
From Hawaii to Wyoming, I fight for beauty, always waking to find I'm someone new...
My family calls me a blonde bimbo and won't give me my inheritance, so I take drastic steps...
CAUTION: MORAL HAIRSPLITTING
I was a sheltered girl till I entered my family's secret ancestral vault. I didn't expect to meet...
After my husband's death, I dreamed he pointed at a small black bag I hadn't opened. It held insurance policies...
I feel a drag, and take off my safety belt. I find I've been towing an invisible buggy with two men in it...
Actress Teri Garr and Isis the talking cat recur all night, but
so does a baseball glove I haven't pulled out in years. Why?
A few days later a friend asks for that glove, and I find...
Mistress Abbot dreams if she eats a jackfish her child will be great. Next morning one swims into her waterbucket...
Soon after my friend and mentor James Merrill died, I had recurring, elusive dreams about him...
Among aliens, humans are jokes. Fragile and blind, we can't fly starships. Unless we build our own...
The will named a strange executor: a kangaroo. Turns out there's some logic to it:
executors need burglar-skills, and few quadrupeds can climb in bedroom windows...
The dead treasure-hunter's will ordered us, his heirs, to convene in the wood.
Attacked there by a knight in armor, we near-strangers must unite to win our...
I'm a dog princess, on a world where kibble falls from heaven. When I meet our species' guardian angels...
CAUTION: DOG NUDITY, LAWYERS
The children of some castaways refuse to go 'home': to them, this shore IS home. So what won't I leave?
I'm a kid again, waltzing with my dad, though he's long dead. He hands me the trumpet inside his chest. When
I wake, I feel it still. My mom just died; I've reclaimed a playful part of him she condemned all her long life...
The rich block reform. So let's offer the rich what they really want: ranking and attention...
CAUTION: CHIMPONOMICS
The life-loop. A woman bears a child who grows up to become herself, who bears a child who...
CAUTION: SKETCHY NUDITY
Creatures in the primal sea touch my third eye, dragons cry their eyes out, I fight the Sphinx, and arrive at last in...
On the show Finding Your Roots, it turns out my dad's a genetic experiment born in...
1880?! The experiment worked; my sisters and I are slow-maturing, long-lived mutants...
A friend in Heaven promises Helen a lost ring would return to her. Three days later it did; but its path had been strange...
A bear-girl seduced by her coyote professor gets a
little advice on revenge from her anthropologist mom...
Mary Queen of Scots' will (1556) was lost for centuries. In 1845, Major Buckley hypnotized
a fellow officer and had him 'read' a family heirloom. He said it was Mary's! Her lost will
was found in 1854 and published in 1863. Turned out the claim in the trance was right...
CAUTION: MARY'S LIFE WAS BRUTAL
I meet a girl who's a Mendelian hybrid of human, animal and peavine! But I'm no more human than she is...
Many kids anxiously dream their parents aren't their real parents. I dreamed my parents ATE my real parents...
CAUTION: HUNGRY MONSTERS
Everyone has a personal moon. At first, mine disappointed me, till a bard dumped his trash on it, and...
Nearly everyone in my family dreams of a mass murder as it happens nearby. But my dad's sure it's his own
evil id, and my mom clams up, and my sister forgets. And me? I doubt the whole thing for ten years, until...
CAUTION: NIGHTMARE VIOLENCE
a dream-poem provoking a 2008/9/16 dream by Chris Wayan
I was in my mother's closet, trying on her outfits, and trapped in Hamlet, too...
How exactly did I acquire a mother-in-law snooping on my phone calls, when I don't have a wife?
Sally Morgan, in her famous autobiography, details racism and family silence, but also her
family's matter-of-fact acceptance of premonitions and dreams. I feel acceptance envy!
I'm at the beach, seeing it through English linguistic filters. Or do I? Is there a language under language?
At a family picnic, my sisters and I fish for scholarships and grants. They put down my art, my website...
My best friend and I qualify for new bodies. The new me is taller, but poor Ken may take years adjusting to his new...
I dream the new Dalai Lama's a kind woman who gives me startling health advice
AND shows me how to fly. The next day...
Festival night in a strange town, where, one night a year, dancing in the street transforms you into...
CAUTION: SEX TALK
I'm in San Francisco trying to throw Sauron's Ring into the Cracks of San Andreas.
But a sexy sorcerer steals my sense of I! How can you act without a self?
Before I was born, I set up this life to learn loneliness, boredom and fear. Good move, soul! No vacations?
I move hundreds of miles away to escape my family's psychic broadcasts. Pathetic, but... does it work?
Malaria nearly kills a talented young artist; he must retrain from scratch. Why? Well, he's not exactly himself...
I want to join the inner circle of America's political elite.
But to do that I have to survive the Ordeal by Infrastructure...
Towers, before he was killed, argued Terman was wrong: geniuses are often isolated and maladjusted...
CAUTION: UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS
A vagabond king showed me the way into Faerie, and it made my fortune. But now it's time to pass the gift on...
I walk on Martinique with Captain Picard of the starship Enterprise. He's here to see a dreamy boy...
Thomas Piketty argues we obsess on income, ignore capital. My experience suggests he's right. Track wealth, tax wealth...
CAUTION: NON-DREAM RANT, ECONOMICS, HOW TO GET RICH SLOW
I dream of a half-pony half-human girl who can't eat either hamburgers or hay. She figures out an appropriate diet...
My body turns protean: big Popeye muscles pop out as needed, relaxing into stick-figureness...
Among the family portraits in the hall of my ancestors was this one of a formidable old... woman, I guess.
We sail to the Isle of the Blest, but God exiles me to Fargo, North Dakota. But God's up to something subtle...
Child prodigies may develop allergies due to immunosystem damage from too much testosterone in utero...
My sister's avoiding our nosy parents, but I sense they'll run into her soon. I just didn't know HOW soon...
twin dreams predicting their children and nation will prosper.
Ragnhild sees a lovely tree rooted in her pain and blood;
Halfdan sleeps with pigs and dreams he has a great head of hair...
CAUTION: KIDNAPPING, ARSON, GENERAL BARBARISM (check the date!)
In our steamy future, after the cities drown, I'm hiking through Rainbow Tunnel, when I meet a holy man...
A man slowly walled in by neighbors till he died, is now a mad, murderous ghost.
And he's me! Can I exorcise MYSELF?
CAUTION: VIOLENCE
The jewels in the hoard had strange powers, but the advice of the dragon guarding them was even stranger...
After seeing 150 years of family photos, I dream of being teased by time-traveling cheerleaders, and...
Jeffers, that harsh, visionary, ecological poet, seems drunk on Darwinism,
blind to kindness--or is he just reporting Big Sur's true, mean spirit(s)?
CAUTION: LITERARY AND MYSTICAL
I'm a robot in high school. I have my first dream, but I'm deaf to its message cuz it's not spectacular...
DAY: on the radio Carl Sagan calls those who've experienced ESP or UFOs "proto-fascists"...
DREAM: a flying pewter teapot orbits a round blue vase--like a starship round the Earth...
NEXT WEEK: My mom calls. She's selling that pewter pot after a century in the family...
CAUTION: DISSES SAGAN
I'm a faun, the oracle for a Greek village. But my predecessor set up rituals I want to change...
CAUTION: SEX, PAGANISM, SELF-SATYRE
For years the Sea-Wolf enslaved me. He said I had to fight him and win to be free. I'm ready at last...
Reactionaries smash a paper. To rebuild, the editor must sell
the sacred tiki carvings! But gods don't LIKE being sold...
CAUTION: MORAL QUANDARY
In our wizard-war, I've hidden my nature. At last I come out; but I can't tell the whole truth...
An Arab shows me a stone he calls a book, and a prophetic shell that warns of a flood rushing toward us...
Jung and a little brown man shoot down Siegfried the German Hero, riding his chariot of bones. Wait... his what?
CAUTION: GRIM
My sisters roll a single die. Miriel can influence it telekinetically, but can't
shoot very well, since she hasn't grown opposable thumbs yet, as kittens do...
I dream I'm suicidal; but I'm saved when I'm shown the flow of human development--the same pattern,
from souls to civilizations! Eddies and knots recur, but the challenges slowly get more spiritual.
NEXT DAY: I learn what my shaman-friend Dee just dreamed. And now I'm unsure whose dream this is...
CAUTION: IDEAS
The future. Humanity's trapped--no energy. Because aliens looted our world before we evolved! Now...
My family moves into a damp, leaking basement. My dad just sneers at us for fussing
about the cold, the damp, the mildew, the leaks. "I'll show you REAL leaking..."
I'm a half-sphinx--human dad, sphinx mom--stuck in human form so far.
Will I ever learn to shift? I practice--sculpt my elegant feline future self...
CAUTION: SPHINX NUDITY
While I study how humans went extinct, my
daughter happily splashes in the sea...
I'm a hot archeology student till I open the wrong tomb. A plague
turns us into green moldy monsters--at first...
CAUTION: DISEASE, DEATH, GRIEF, SHAME
On a poster of a model who's around my weight, someone's scrawled STARVATION IMAGERY...
CAUTION: DEFENSE OF SKINNY PEOPLE
He said "Oh, Mom, I had a terrible dream. A car ran me down."
I said we could not live by dreams or we live a life of horror...
I dream I'm an otter, and wake into a dream about sculpture--and learn my style's due to my species...
I'm Doctor Who, being chased by an air-surfer who demands we give up a reserved, proud man named...
CAUTION: MILD NUDITY
I pull my mom's sweater onto my legs but get tangled (and bits of anatomy dangle).
Worse, I'm emulating Jesus. Is this any way to get a date?
CAUTION: WARDROBE MALFUNCTION, GENDER MALFUNCTION, MOM MALFUNCTION
A toxic site in Silicon Valley isn't a chemical spill, but angry ghosts, killed in a camp and forgotten...
CAUTION: THE CAMP TURNS OUT TO BE REAL
Ethiopian records say Solomon and Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, had a son who stole
the Ark of the Covenant! Solomon dreamt of the theft but didn't check til it was too late...
Dreams of my childhood--bootlegger dad, critical mom, gun-
happy uncles, slaughtered squirrels, slaughtered Jews...
Dead fish in a poisoned stream, dead kittens in a pit...
and advice from the woman who revives them with a touch.
A woman in Tibet disassembles herself! A local god hires her spirit,
but she uses the office equipment to backup her memories and...
CAUTION: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME
In a city crawling across a marshy world, I find a detonating bomb frozen in a time-ball.
Why not detonate it somewhere harmless, why carry this around?
Clarence the sappy angel from It's A Wonderful Life and Milton's Lucifer land on Earth, offering treaties.
Who to sign with? Clarence thinks we're fine as is, but the Devil's a tinkerer, learning from failures. Failures
like me and my girlfriend Titania, the first android with a full palette of feelings. Like the feeling she's fake...
A trail toward Freedom has extra markers, for it's three trails, superimposed! Not all the cues are for us...
Silicon Valley goes enthusiastically fascist. I hide in a berry patch. They build a shining world, and then...
I'm half Anglo, half Kwakiutl. My uncle the shaman died,
but he still wants to teach me his medicine...
I'm climbing a tower, as my dad, Apollo, drunk, throws bottles at me from the top, breaking bones...
CAUTION: DENIAL ABOUT ALCOHOLISM
I dream my daughter's selling two unused guitars. They seemed symbolic until I told her the dream and...
A glamorous heiress casts a spell that spills over, so I can have anyone I see! But who DO I see?...
My family home's invaded by ancient Egyptian architects. So
I put on my unicorn mask and eavesdrop on their plans...
I ask to see my past lives, and dream of a viewpoint where I can--but this Mormon ranger...
I dreamt Anacreon the poet reeled with drink and lust--and I am wild and wanton like to him...
A job as the only priest on an island colony sounded perfect, only I'm the wrong religion...
CAUTION: DOGMATISTS AND DEAD BIRDS TALKING
A road trip through New Mexico mutates into a tour of my relationship disasters...
My father-in-law looked me in the eye and said, 'Florence, the Lord is my shepherd and we go in peace'...
I find the Well of Women's Wisdom. Lucky I'm female tonight! A girl sneers "Narrow!" Is it, or her?
I cut off my own head! But I grew a new one. Only what to do with the old one? It's starting to rot...
CAUTION: SELF-DISMEMBERMENT
I'm nine years old again. But my mom acts like a child--crawls into a hole. I follow, scared,
and find my grandfather packing to leave the Old Country before the Nazis kill us all...
CAUTION: FEAR & PERSECUTION
My grandmother dreamt a white-faced black mare trampled me in our orchard.
We had no such mare. But 29 years later, I boarded a man's two mares...
A dreamer I know dreamt she was fired by a Mr Bleeden. Baffled her, but made shocking sense to me! My dad...
We're exploring the English farm we inherited, when The Wild Hunt storms over the hill...
I was bodiless but trapped. All I could see were these moving wires. Whenever a knot drifted by...
CAUTION: MADNESS, TORMENT, TELEPATHY, SEXUAL REBELLION
Nancy Friday describes a kind of weak guy disturbingly like me--I think chronic illness has...
A mystic postman delivers a letter on the world's best glasses and a reply from me, telling how to find them...