My family and I are prisoners in a camp that will be H-bombed so our remains
can be studied. I write a Buddhist poem preparing for death...
CAUTION: GOVERNMENT ATROCITY
Idiotically, I bet I can escape an atomic bomb on my bike. Maybe if I ignore stoplights...
CAUTION: IRRESPONSIBLE WEAPONS USE
I meet William F. Buckley and his beloved pet pig. Only
the hog's a live H-Bomb, and the leash is a trigger...
CAUTION: REVOLTING GUY, PET, AND ISSUE
I'm trapped in an alien hotel, my true love has gone radioactive,
and the only way out is to turn into a giant, scary...
CAUTION: CLOSET LESBIAN. LITERAL CLOSET.
A crane came and spoke to me, reassuring me "I'll be back" even as a great fire burned it. It returned
as a white butterfly. Next morning, as we played hide and go seek, I shut my eyes and counted to...
CAUTION: CIVILIANS MASSACRED
I'm in Lawrence, Kansas, watching a TV ad for hemorrhoid cream that won't solve your nuclear war problems...
CAUTION: LANGUAGE; ADVERTISING; HUMAN EXTINCTION
Chapter 1 of a nine-story series: UNICORN TAG.
A sentient factory shows me a gene-tweaked future where the Deer Party agitates for
liberty, equality and fertility. In that future I learn I too may not be human...
DREAM: On a farm, I meet two sexy shapeshifting sisters. But mushroom clouds rise on the horizon...
NEXT DAY: at SF-MOMA, Susan Marie Dopp's paintings: shapeshifting sisters, mushroom clouds...
CAUTION: NUDITY; ESP
After trespassing in a staff-only part of Faerie, I'm cast out.
Only I'm cast like a seed, meant to grow a new elf circle...
I'm trapped in a TV documentary on nuclear war! Better dive through a TV screen and find a safe sitcom...
I'm an initiate in a Sung Dynasty monastery. But I have no idea how far the hazing can go...
CAUTION: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME
My Japanese friend Kotaro looks at me sternly and shoves his phone inside my chest. In my dreams, a phone
can mean ESP, so when I wake I check the news. A huge quake and tsunami have devastated Japan...
A huge explosion knocked the earth off its orbit; it struck other planets and wrecked the whole
solar system. Where will the souls ready to reincarnate all go? Or do they even need a planet?...
I'm in a tribe of post-Crash kids with psychic powers, trying to keep nukes from rising again...
CAUTION: CHILD SOLDIERS
I'm given photos of what a murderer saw, but I recognize these scenes. I am the murderer! At least I've solved the case.
I'm in a bare white room. On the wall, a long fuse sparks. I feel euphoric from ozone--it means I've had a fatal radiation dose...
I hide a chip of secrets from thugs, fight a running light-gun battle, and hide in my workplace's
crawlways, amid live cables and pipes. As the factory burns, I run a gauntlet of goons. A girl
leads me into the underworld. Fires glow and mutants dance. I marry the leader of the pack.
I'm abducted by scaly alien mercenaries. But halfway to their ship, we get stuck. As we
wait and talk, I find I like them. The problem's their boss--a rich, spoiled human...
ESP is like having neutrino detectors for eyes: what radiates from people's cores blinds you to their surfaces...
Nuclear holocaust. Outside, an ashen waste. I decide to cut my wrists in the tub. But a corpse already fills it.
A man drives up. A voice commands "Make a child!" I protest--the world's gone--but the voice says...
Erica dreams that during a protest she's caught in a radioactive flood...
Michael dreams a nuclear forcefield makes his fingertips explode and congeal into weird knobs...
Joanne dreams she meets nuclear mutants with curling black nails great for peeling potatoes...
Scott dreams the world goes silent and white, bleaching out. His hands dissolve...
I dream my theatre friends are particles dancing inside an atomic nucleus--
particles that reveal their character, motivations and power. And I'm one too...
I'm a were-crane in a flock fighting the dreaded Human Flu, setting off sterilizing nukes. But
birds aren't great with explosives; I end up hiding from a flash behind Stonehenge megaliths...
DREAM: a 1950s newsreel shows J. Edgar Hoover, founder of the FBI, staged a coup.
So his enemies dropped a tactical nuke on his HQ, killing hundreds in the street...
NEXT DAY: TV news shows clips from The Day After. My nightmare newsreel...
CAUTION: VIOLENCE AND POSSIBLE ESP
Now the Evil Empire's dead. We're all safe, safe at last. And all the bombs are gone... right?
Looks like this underground nuclear test will leak. Minutes from detonation,
we flee up the spiral stair and out across the sand. Can we run far enough in time?
In a dark classroom, my shrink was demonstrating atom-splitting
with a glowing ping pong ball. I was glad I wasn't in that class...
A picture-poem experiment: one dream per stanza!
Five short dreams exploring the weight of culture on our animal selves...
During Tiananmen, I was in Beijing for a conference. I heard chaotic noise outside, and the muffled sounds of gunfire.
I dreamed a star painted the sky an eerie purple-green. Children sang, marching over snow, rifles fitted with bayonets...
I live in four consecutive bodies: I'm a Bose-Einstein condensate, a cloud of particles moving as one--
unless overheated. No, I'm Witch's Butter, a mob of amoeboid cells who unify into a quasi-slug--temporarily.
No, I'm a person, but soft and yellow as Witch's Butter. No, I'm firming up, but still entangled...