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.