Two women I know show me a long
whiplike stamen and tell me dong
jokes. Sappy dong jokes. I'm supposed
to plug the whip-tip in a nipple or sphinc-
ter in my seed-pod pillow. I think

I know where: the pillow's fucked before.
But now the lilac nipple's sealed o'er
on the maturing pod. Sex-season gone.
Harvest darkness nears; our world's moved on.

Wriggle, content: I have a mystery infection. Is this how the parasites in me feel? A placid affection for the home they harm?
Dark harvest nears: the dream warns my love life's over. Harvest my poems. Life wanes, death nears. Or does it? Note the date. Happy Halloween!

My friend Cory lugs home her Halloween shell:
Lady Liberty. Each plastic chunk massive as a ham--
meat-orange shoulderpads, leg-guards, greaves
(is that grief's plural, or the armor I mean?)

to beef up her limbs till she hulks more like Ram-
    bo than the Liberty statue I know.
    Is she the Tea Party version? No,
she bears the book and torch, but lacks the M-16.

Cory: of all my friends, the least Ramboid! Lean coyote, not blunt bulldog. But bulldogs are tamable; it's coyotes who'll die for their liberty.
Rambo/Liberty fused: Today I saw the Altered Barbie Exhibition--plastic turtles, robots, soldiers fused with The Blonde One...
Tea Party Liberty with M-16: they do blast away indiscriminately, don't they? Real Halloween monsters...

In her stealth-trench looms a monstrous beet.
Alder: "I can't pry it out; gotta dig more."
But I try seduction on the cling. Coax the shy root.
Slow maroon node loosens. When we at last upbeet,

after a wasp-waist, a second bulge crowns below.
Babyheadish. Beet fetus? This twin's a full foot
wide and sphered: beet globe! All the world. I tease
warily till this magenta monster frees.

Alder chortles "Now we fill in the floor!"
But her rubble-pile will fall far short:
for the twins took up a good cubic foot.
Dirt from the veg patch, fallow now in fall...

Scrape soil in a pail. Oops! I kidnap hapless plants--
strawberry runners. Tease from the spade and replant
in the sun. For in my family home they'd be entombed,
And don't even stray runners deserve their chance?

Alder: often means practicality in my dreams--the obligations of daily life.
Feel the beet: a pun? "I feel beat!" I HAVE been overworking.
Top beet links to a deeper beet: a surface issue leads to a deeper one--but what? The vaginal/clitoral/baby imagery suggests sex/love, not work.
Don't entomb the 'runners': a second pun? The dream contrasts domestic commitment (beets store energy indoors) and sexual freedom to "stray" (strawberry runners in the sun). I want freedom.
Hole in floor: that spot did have a loose tile. I think the hole means family flaws... like conflict-avoidance! Today I agonized over a squabble with the curator of the Altered Barbie Show (today's shallow root). But love & friendship can't flourish without assertion (the deep root).

upside down in a Mork-from-Ork pose--
shins armrested, head seated, butt aired. Clothes
opened or doffed; breast vest, but belly, thighs
and cunt bare. Beet-pink. Her wide-set eyes
flash at me peering out my terrarium glass
at her street-exhibitionist ass.

I hesitate, shy to head for the door...
In bursts Alder! Wants help with a chore.
Hand on my wrist, keeps me sensibly home
and leashed. Did I beg for a chaperone?

Alder: in the third dream I didn't mind her ripping up the floor; yet here I blame her for my shy hesitation; I let Alder (daily life's demands?) distract me. Why?

My new bedroom opens south on a sunny yard,
bare save an old wood post a foot wide, four high.
Big lignous lingam! Hawk-perched atop, a lissome girl,
in jeans, red flannel, scrimshaw boots and smile.

Sketch her on paper, then in clay. Odd: the cowgirl's real
details change with the sketch! Though I can only tweak
feathers on the bird: hair, clothes, eye color, nose,
never bone and soul. But so? I like her as she is.

Is she my love to be? Hope so! But love may still
be some yards off, in temporal space. And just who
I'll futuremeet is shaped, some(Jungian)how,
by my thoughtfullest, lovingest art-labors now.

Until I'm done, naught else will do;
I'd better render her deep and true.

Girl on phallic post, doll-sized model: doll-sculptures on pedestals at the Altered Barbie Exhibition
Shaping her within limits: I was summoning--shaping--a future love via art, just as cave artists tried to summon game!
ACTION: I'll only find love when I'm clear who I seek. And I clarify that by embodying dreams in art. So... DO the art!