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quilts

the figures in the frontseat of the car turned to look at me, then dissolved as we crashed into a sand-colored canyon, then flashed at me, their features leering without being faces, just pillars of sand. i used to have dreams of zooming down my favorite mountain backroads in the back of my mother's car, the car empty except for me, the deep blue interior only jostling me slightly as the car veered around the corners, the day free of mist and the dream not quite as frightening as it should be. i wake up and see still the faces turning to sand, flashing on and off in front of me, and have to listen to neil young to bring me back to earth, after stumbling around the apartment the floor of which i sleep on, no furniture, staring out the window at my car, thinking that it's not my car, that these walls don't belong to me, that that driveway is not mine, and i shudder and want to weep at the eternity of fast rooms, flushing toilets, showers draped with sinister curtains in the half-dark, that i have not quite connected with as i slept and woke up and slept in their walls, toilets flushing constantly under my overactive bladder, cheap lamps flashing on and off, on and off, drains choking. my girlfriend sits on cold dusty tiles on the floor of an obscure lobby where i've never been, tiles simple black and white, me lying like a roman on my side, eating a small portion of her with a fork that came from nowhere, the underside of her upper leg exactly like cold skinless chicken as i peel away a good chunk, no violence or malice at all, she looks calm and even grins at me playfully but without great intensity, and i have no anger at all, it's the closest i've ever been to off-white emotionlessness. when i wake up from this dream in the frontseat of my car on a backroad made thin by ferns and weeds and soaked in simple moonlight, then it becomes disturbing, the tiles moaning black and white in my memory, me disturbed at the passive way that i ate and the passive way in which she was eaten.

i sit on a brick porch where i've never been, and all my relatives march out onto this patio, the minivan tumbles past, the two figures in the front seat, who were once my mother and grandmother but are now statues of hardened sand, i hear them rattling with scraping sandpaper sounds in the back of my head as they plummet into a canyon that is now only on the television, a television that is pasted against the sunset, we're outdoors but there's a fanblade whirring on the floor of the kitchen where i used to eat peas and cold skinless chicken, and drink milk the taste of which i hated. now i enjoy the glass of milk in my hand but i knock it onto the warm but cooling bricks under the sunset on this unfamiliar yet familiar patio surrounded by distant cliff-faces through which minivans soar almost constantly, sand faces flashing on and off as i clutch the remote control and pause the sunset, looking up from the patio where i expect to see an eerie and shimmering puddle of milk and some broken glass, but i have no idea where the milk has gone, i run through the aforementioned kitchen and the large wooden fanblades are turning on the floor where they don't belong, i can't escape this familiar vampire unlike any i've seen or heard of in fantasy, his hands gripping the hood of my sweatshirt, the radio softly smearing cat stephens on the air, the kitchen air that smells the same in this geographical spot even after the house is torn down, the only way i can escape this vampire-like creature with a face like an older version of myself, the way i always save myself, is to lay down backwards on the fan that's on the floor, and it begins spinning, i close my eyes so i can't see his obscure face that is always blurred, and i wake up, which is worse. peas bob in the milkglasses after i exit the dream, my vampire/self pursuer wanders hallways with an empty brain, left with nobody to frighten, or goes into the empty woods, onto the backroads where i will one day fall asleep in a car and dream of eating a lover who i haven't met yet and have always known. the patio is empty, even i'm not there, except for endless coils of orange extension cord, connected to nothing, golden plug-ends drooping over the edges of cliffs, no minivans lying on the floor of the canyon, me standing at my window as the headlights make my head bulge with tension, masturbating, the droplets falling to the kitchen floor with calm soft pattering sounds that deny the frenzy of my orgasm, so that i can sleep and forget about their faces turning to totem-pole carvings and flashing as the van plummeted into a small ditch that became a canyon, sodacans that became helicopters as we fell, and the smell of blueberries that didn't belong there.

i don't remember if her flesh had any taste at all, my mother's reflection keeps flashing on and off in the rearview mirror as i scream softly in the backseat, i have never sat behind the wheel of a car but i reach over from the backseat and try to steer, even though the car stays on the road without assistance and my yells muffled by glass lazily float like distant windchimes but lower over empty lawns that nobody has ever walked on or even seen, or had to cut, because it has been the same day all my life and this doesn't give grass any time to grow, or to rot, it stays green as a tv commercial, i will always be in the backseat of this car, no matter how nonsensical the occurrences, they've all happened before, and nobody will ever come out of those front doors, the cars took the residents away long ago, and a peace comes into me like purified air drifting down from the paralyzed mountains, the peaks motionless because my eyes can't see anyone crawling on them and it's too cold up there for me anyway, why hike mountains if the towns you look down on are dead as a postcard, motionless? i will live at the foot of this road built into the side of a mountain, falling off the same roof over and over again, a huge black ball under me, bouncing higher than the houses surrounding with greying motionless wooden smells, the woods waiting for me in the dark, mushrooms colorless in moonlight waiting to be discovered in the perfect morning where i will walk through goldenrod, hacking a path, the dream ended temporarily, i'm able to move now without bouncing, and awake, there is a difference because i don't think this moment has happened before as i always do when i'm dreaming, and i want the sun to get low enough that i can find it lying in a field at the other end of this goldenrod that i hack a thin path in with a gnarled stick, the sun yellow-white hot and canceling the smells of corpses, high as a skyscraper in the backyard of a factory, in a sewage plant, the sun sitting there just the same, smaller than i expected, and my nerves erased by dreams, my face numb in wonderment at the sun's ability to sit uncontaminated until it begins to fade and become flaky and grey as a wasp nest in front of me, it's swirls revealed in the greater visibility of it's waning heat looking like cowlick formation on the back of a young boy's head, mine because i'm looking over unbelievably high wooden dressers and the smells of make-up and repulsive perfumes that i am disturbed by because i can't believe that these perfumes are supposed to smell good, and the women who wear them couldn't possibly be members of my family, but they smile and run their hands through my hair, and when their hands touch my head my body hums with perfection as if i'm taking a hot-water shower, a strange human electricity forcing peace upon me, even though i squirm when their strange lukewarm knobby too-long fingers feeling like latex that i haven't yet touched run through my hair and pretend not to need it, but i do need it, will need it more than ever when i wake up in the frontseat of my car on a backroad, a patchy cloud making the bright moon flutter on the spider-webbed windshield and the fork that came from nowhere no longer in my hand, unable to complete the dream or the reality.

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