Take Me Out to the Ballgame Anxiety Dream
We have tickets for a game
at Shea Stadium although
we know the stadium was torn
down years ago. Still, we are
going and the easiest way to
get there is on the elevated #12 line.
We rush up the stairs to the station,
then across the tracks and we are
almost there as the train arrives
but my wife says she doesn’t think
that’s the right line despite insisting
all along that was the way to go.
Naturally, we miss that train, so we
decide to walk even though it is
an extremely long walk that would
take hours even if we could get there
from here. Then we are on the shoulder
of the Crosstown wondering what bus
might take us to the game despite being
on the wrong side of the highway
to hail a bus. I’m extremely nervous
about crossing the bridge, we are on
as I am afraid of heights when a guy
on a motorcycle falls off his bike but
is somehow scooped up and rescued
before he gets run over and killed.
The motorcycle man is extremely
upset, yelling and screaming at us in
a language we can’t understand.
Once he calms down, he notices us
standing nearby and he begins
speaking calmly and clearly in our
language and he tells us we are now
hostages as being part of a terrorist plot.
I say, “All we want to do is go to a ballgame.”
And he says, “If I were you, I wouldn’t
worry about a baseball game, you have
much bigger things to worry about.
I have a bomb.”
A Writer’s Conference Anxiety Dream
We’re driving to the writer’s convention
on the island we have to take a ferry to reach.
Apparently, I am driving though it is well
known that I have no license, have never
had one, and I have no idea where we are going
or even who we are. I’ve decided to take
the fourteen-mile suspension bridge, that
doesn’t exist, to the island in a dense fog,
in heavy traffic at high speed. All the other
drivers must be from Pennsylvania,
I think, recalling fifty miles of near fog out
conditions near Wilkes Barre where folks
were driving bumper to bumper at 75 mph
the whole way. There is a toll both ahead but
no one intends to pay and then we are at a rest
stop buying energy drinks and the beer we’ll
need later on. Once we reach the mainland,
a guide introduces us to our gondola driver
whose name is Ivor and he looks as if he should be
an extra in a movie like Eastern Provinces or
History of Violence rather than a gondolier
on an east coast channel island. Once we get
to the inlet, where the writers are, there is a pig
roast in our honor and we can smell the meat
cooking but we can’t see the food because of the fog.
The first reader has a heavy middle European
accent and introduces himself as Charles Simic
but we all know this is impossible given how
dead he is. Still, his poems are good and we think,
perhaps, he is ghost of Simic, which makes sense
somehow, and appears to provide deeper meaning
to the context of the conjunction of ghost, man
and poetry. Later, near the middle of the roster
of readers that extends from Hart Crane to
John Berryman to Sylvia Plath to Anne Sexton,
who is scheduled to read just before me, I start
to have a bad feeling about the conference
and wonder if coming here might not have been
a serious error in judgment.
Where the Wild Things Are
Once the entrance fee is
paid, I am compelled to enter
the cave. At first, the walls are
regular, rounded, and expansive
but gradually the walls narrow and
compress as the slope inside
becomes more extreme until I am
forced to bend over, then crawl on
my hands and knees. All the light
I have comes from a small device
strapped to my helmet making the way
down more treacherous, especially
once the walls, ceiling, and floor
become slicker, more slippery,
the further inside I crawl. There is
a guide somewhere ahead encouraging
me on but I can’t hear exactly what
he is saying nor what his location is.
If it were possible to turn around
and flee I would be long gone but
there is no way back, only down,
further and further into the darkness,
where the wild things are.
Class Registration Anxiety Dream
All the names of the advisors for
transfers and new students are listed
on a movable bulletin board in the gym
along with the courses they are offering.
I’ve been told it is absolutely essential
to consult with one of these counselors
but all the ones are listed are from another
college I no longer attend and none of
the courses apply to my chosen field of study.
A literature professor at a nearby folding
table tells me not to worry,
“I’ll take care of everything.”
I watch as she shuffles a handful of IBM
computer cards, chooses some, and feeds them
into a machine that looks like a factory
time card punch clock. After the cards
are processed she hands me a print out
with my name on it and , a list of all
my next semester courses. Before I can
leave the professor says,
“Don’t forget these.”
She hands me a folder with the course work
syllabi and a fat mimeographed reading list
that looks like an appendix to Foster Wallace’s
Infinite Jest, footnotes and all.
I try to explain that this schedule is impossible.
That I’ll never ne able to keep up as I work
nights, have two infants and I’ll never be
able to sleep. And she says,
“Who needs sleep? No one ever sleeps in
graduate school.”
And then I’m on a conveyor belt like one
of those airport moving sidewalks that are
everywhere in the tunnels beneath the campus.
I’m desperately trying to get off because I’m
supposed to be on the up escalators but there doesn’t
seem to be any way to get off. Not that it matters,
neither the walkways nor the escalators go
anywhere near where you need to be.
Eventually, I ask one of my classmates about
the tunnels and she says,
“Have you ever been here in Winter?”
“No” I say, “I haven’t. Not yet, anyway.”
“You can’t get anywhere above ground
in Winter. You’ll need to get snowshoes too.
And a gun.”
“A gun! What for?”
“The wolves.”
Full Dental Services Anxiety Poem
I must have been late for my
teeth cleaning as there is already
a line out the door. The last time
I was here they were using scalpels
for scaling and I saw after care
patients in recovery rooms with
blood pack transfusions underway.
After what felt like hours the line
has barely moved so some of us
decide to go for a walk on the campus
of the college across the street.
Despite the weather being clear and warm
when we started, soon it is darker
and snowy with a fierce wind in
our face. I turn to ask one of my companions,
“What’s with the weather?” But there
is no one there and while the snow
has stopped, it is now a dark and a moonless
night and I am lost in a forest of dense trees.
I struggle onward but it becomes impossible
to walk in the underbrush and I am being
lacerated by needles that are growing
from the branches of the evergreens.
Once the laughing gas has been taken
Away, I see that I am in the recovery room
and the procedure has been completed
but I am not in the same office nor with
the same people who were on line with
me earlier. A receptionist is asking for payment
for services rendered but I can’t move my arm
to sign a check as I am still connected to
the transfusion fluid bag. I hear other people
laughing but I am not finding anything funny
here so I refuse to join in. The receptionist is
still waiting for me to sign the check
staring at me with a look that says,
“Any time you’re ready would work for me.”
I am beginning to wonder if any of this
costs extra or is everything included.
