Unghosts of China

Dreamed 2009/9/2 by Wayan

THAT DAY

Write my dreams at dawn. Red chili sun. Soon my room hits 35. I'm overcome. Flee to the shade of our deck, and sponge vermilion on a bookcase: faux flame. Turn this heat to art. Art's all I am. Next a friend brings me muddy photos to fix-- since Lily's real quilts breathe fire. I slide the saturation screaming, till it's true. Then I Fade to black: mix ink cave-dark, and with a dry brush I illustrate a dream-poem by Roswila, queen of dreamku: A Gothic Tale. I try The leftover ink on a rough sketch of my own dream Sleepers All. Next pencil and digital tints for that dream of the mad old man who can Surf the San Andreas, and lay the illos in. Then polish and trim the text of all... Gnaw the harsh bark smooth. Art's all I am. Then to the piano. Lay down a rap confessing I'm a thin skin smile, masking a skittish changeling animal. Still too sad and fursonal--strip down! Gnaw me smooth for all. Art's all I am. A respite? In the fat-moon eve, Luna leads Chihuahua Jupiter on a little walk through cloudwisps tousled as maestro hair... we're off to Yoshi's sushi bar to hear Eight-Legged Monster--jazz and miso. Tasty if innumerate: I count eleven legs or more though mostly they play to a count of four. Too bad! All but a couple of songs are straight tarantular dances, major-key, and then the Legs just noodle frantically. Twice in the evening they slow and swing, oh lyric snakenotes ooze from trumpet or baritone sax. Solo so smooth, so low! But too many legs just spoil the octopus. (I whine because I long to join and jam.) Now, 1 AM, I smooth this verse. Art's all I am.

THAT NIGHT

I'm in rural China. Rivers, crags. A local girl tells me her worst woe. And to my cynical surprise even to me it's new: there's a spot nearby where legend recounts how she horribly died. All lies! Here she stands. Yet her village swears she was killed in a notably outré way. And happening still! That is she's mythically dying there all the time. It gets so dull! They dammed the gorge, so they trucked her death uphill. Now she's memorially mythtaken high on a misty ridge. But why care exactly where the liars localize their lie? Her best friend tells me her worst sorrow. The same! Rumored demon-slain, on identical lake-drowned spot: Clone-woe! Folktale and gossip cut her dead too, though she's not. Their trouble's not personal but a pattern to be fought! They're so tired tired tired of it though! Ready to lop their Chi- nese roots, be urban & mod. Deny the whole clan thing. How can folks see through fake history to you alive and breathing... if to the lie they cling?

NOTES IN THE MORNING