Sweven

12th

Bridges
The way is as winding as the river. There is no way across but for the overpasses we slip under. We do not want the highways. We see, sometimes, slender fingers of sandbar poking into the river. Sometimes the fingers nearly poke the wanted shore. These are not the way. They are bridges to other worlds from which crossers never return. We wander on.


13th

Wired
The world rests. She is snug and warm under the blanket sent. All are forced to stop. But I can not. My fondest dream awaits. Tunnel up through a crystal quilt. Scale the nearest electric stilt. Run cross wires, current-less. "Come down from there before you get hurt!" mother's voice rings from all around. I can not. I call back, "No! There's dreams to be caught!"

+ 1 lucid dream


Hypnagogic
-Wiggling lights like aurora borealis shine then warp into tidal waves
-See knocking, it looks like spotted snakes

11th

The Hand
A hand gently wraps my sleeping ankle. This is a dream. Find the calm. Let the hand lift and land where it will upon my phantasm flesh. Ghost hand glides over genitalia. Wake.

Locked
Sit up in a stranger's bed. Frantically glance for the ghost hand. It was just a dream. A little lucid dream. Flop back to bed. Sleep paralysis crushes. Find the calm. Through it shines lucidity. Lucid but locked, "Wake."

Too Early
Sit up in my own sleeping realm. Reality check. Not a dream. "I will remember these dreams. I will be lucid soon." Lay. Inhale. Close my eyes. Wisps of light like a spiral galaxy shifts before me. "I'm dreaming." I whisper and open my eyes.

Sit up in bed. "I AM dreaming," Shadows see me smile. Arise. I will fly. Denied. Recall a goal. Denied. Walk through a wall into abandoned night. Look for a tree. None. The scene shivers. It is too early. Sleep is shallow. Must sink deeper.

Drift down into the dark. Cross legs. Close eyes. Attempt to anchor into the scene. Instead, I float. Softly drift in the weightless dark. Hold my position. A thought occurs. Do I drift in dream space? Or am I still and dream space drifts around me? A wash of vertigo. Wake.


It was too early in the night.

11th

Market Madness
Creativity is magic. Venders display their wizardry. Now comes introductions. One young wizard weeps and runs. Stop the world to seek him. At the back door lumbers a man, face half hidden, gun in hand. Bar the door as best I can. Announce the coming threat. The world scatters. Shelter neath shrubs. A second gunman joins the first. They flee. Wizards reconvene and discuss safer spaces. A man, as Caucasian as can be, rants stupendously that the white race is the ruin of the world.

Sky Tidings
Storm clouds stalking. Outrace the rage. Halted by the serene shores of a mirror lake. At its horizon two suns set in harmony. "Take a photo! This is a rare atmospheric phenomenon," I cry. Kayji shoots. Behind us beams a rainbow of vertical stripes. "Get that too! This is even rarer!" She shoots again. Night is a jolt. Upon the lake fireworks dance as if ordained by a certain grey wizard. Reflections upon the lake make double magic. It is enough to wipe away the worry of scourge and storms.

+ 3 Little Lucid Dreams

From the 9th

Gafar

The world is strange. Sentient colors, succulent laughter, sensual scents of food and drink ebb and flow in festive tides. The extravagance is too sweet for souls as bitter as this. Wander away from the fabulous fray.

"You have been challenged to a duel," a twitchy man greets then twists into the crowd. Give chase through worsening worlds and into the belly of a trippy brick beast. Cheerers roar aside. Behind a table I abide.

The other door belches wide. In spills a bloated beast of a man. Recognize his local celebrity face. Gafar. Before any words are laid Gafar waves his arms, thrusts hands my way. An invisible bus slams into me. Fly backward through the doors.

Shock stings stronger than pain. Stand and charge into the belly again. Clarity shines. Know without knowing that this is a dream. Wave my hands. Spin. Thrust palms at Gafar. My invisible strike is soft. His laughs heartily while he force whips me up into ceiling and then down into the floor.

The earth shakes. There is no pain but the sting of shame. Stand. Inhale. Serenity. A river rises into my feet, fills the hollows of my bones. "You will win this... this is your dream." Acknowledge the absolute truth. Lift my hands. The blimp of Gafar bobs into the air, limbs swinging, voice singing with rage.

A grin. A nod. A flick of my hands. Gafar crashes into brick and slops onto the floor. He deflates like a softly stabbed balloon. "This is my dream," I proclaim. The crowd rocks and roars. They boo and hiss. I smile and proclaim again, "This is my dream."

Two men burst from the crowd, "Come on!" I am captured and carries along. "She's coming. You have to hide!"

Pride tempts me to stay. Curiosity bids me go with the flow. The pair lead me back to luxury. Crush ourselves into a closet. Then comes a distant clicking. And then a clacking as her heels rage closer. Curiosity boils, overflows. I must know! Step out and straight into her path.

She is Gafar's sister, all pretention and wrath. "How are your teachers?" she purrs through the wickedest wrench of a grin.

"Fine," is all that can be said. It is the only word left in my head.

Her shark smile spreads. She twists. She clacks violently on her way.

My closet companions, now a trio, cheer the confrontation. I am only caught up in confusion. "This is my dream. What did she mean? What does this mean?" Try to find her again but am lost in the scene.

10th

The Taken
They depart, giggling and glowing like the spring. To the base of the mountain they fly to meet virtual dreams in real life. They vanish. KayJi's phone tells that she is six hours to the north. A flood of panic. A cry to deaf police. Where to begin to find the lost before their end?

The 9th

Singer
Settle into the safety of bed. A stranger face slips through the curtains of my window. His break and enter lullaby does not send me to sleep. Still, I let him sing.

Hypnagogic
-Too many cars crammed in a driveway
-A sea of cheerleaders
-A solitary small child runs down a dark snowy street
-"Don't you know?" someone asked. I turned to see who
-To someone familiar of face I say, "I know you from waking life."


One lucid dream to be added later.

The 8th

Brightness
Faces are friendly. Laughter is warmth while we sit within the east. Sky grows heavy. Clouds fill with ash as they rage in from the south. Rush away home. Here, sky is unblemished. Tiny blooms dot the lawns. Crystal, streetside rivulets run. Walk with Jaytee to where love still lives. World simmers brighter. Lend him sunglasses. Stroll along singing a mirthless song, "The futures so bright we gotta wear shades."

Lioness
A day waning. Lioness roars. Spirits scatter like storm sent wind. Most run away. A few run to. Lioness sings. Those who hear are granted wings. We soar into the ever bleeding heart of the west.

Perfection
Her children stay small. She keeps them in cubbies of sparkling crystal. They are the projection of happiness and health, of fortune and wealth. Can't stand the shine of their pseudo perfection. I hit the holey road.

Hypnagogic
A square pan full of burnt food from which black ash rises and drifts

Sketchers of Souls
With pencil, paper, eagle's eye, we sketch the souls as they roll by. One by one the sketchers fade, leaving unscribbled souls to suffocate neath crystalline undulations of hate. We two, froze, stay sketching. Struggle to record as many souls as we can before the final strike.

The Hungry
We hunger. Farms faded. Aisles echo. All food has flown into the sun. And as we starve my nephew's voice echoes from the darkest crevasse of my skull to the angriest snarl in my gut, "Are people food?"

Tested a recent suggestion I offered. Reality checked 100 times every day for two days in a row. Managed a tidbit of lucidity but it felt loose. Loose-cidity.

Run
Heat, next to hellish, presses upon us all. We are not much more than sore streams of flesh pushing and pouring past shop laden shores. In its simmering midst I snap. I stand. I scream. All currents come to a halt. How freakishly odd. What the feck. Reality check? I do and discover, "I'm dreaming."
Some primal reflex screams at me, "JUST RUN!" I obey simply to see what will come to be of this spontaneous urge. Too soon I slow down. Too soon I forget. "Wasn't I dreaming?" Reality check. "Yes. I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. Don't forget!"
"JUST RUN!" the urge shrieks. I fly on ghost feet through people and walls and worlds. Again my pace slows. Where am I? Don't know. Why am I running? Don't know. Entirely lost, several levels deep, walk back wards to the start. The fog comes crawling. My soul starts cawing shuddersome omens. Slip. Fall. Fade to black.

Hypnagogic
The Bundy's (MWC) eating off the floor like dogs
Dots like lazy snowflakes drifting in and out of view

Culvert
A country too crowded, soaked in a hurried sunset. Try to escape. They have walled all paths. Two planes dance wild. They crash. Their death spark reveals all in the dark. Sky is streams of planes. Distance booms like death. Take cover in a culvert. Cut off from starlight. Misplaced from the moon. We've only the earth for protection. We hope she loves us still. Sing songs from sacred days.

Boxed
A big city. A big building. A big party. Suddenly locked. Streets are a surge zombie warriors with wings of fire and eyes of guns. Screaming metal and humming drones keep us in our boxes. Gather water. Gather food. Gather what wits are left. Hope rolls to us by way of winding tubes and message marbles. We will survive.

Notes:
Fasted for 24 hours to see if my dreams would change or I might possibly become lucid. Attack came in every dream I recalled but there was no life or death fear attached so I can't call them frightening or even nightmares.

Back Man
He lays on pavement, scooting on his back. Two men orbit him, yowling in nonsense. What is happening? Some strange attack? Social media prank? Eventually curiosity wilts. There's work to do. We leave the trio and reclaim our way.

Harry
He revives Harry. It's a one man show. He performs his role like a raving clown. But there is no Floyd. It's only Harry. Bizarrely it works. Our vigilant brains fill in the spaces where Floyds words would be. And I, for the life of me, can't comprehend if the show garbage or genius.

Hood
He fashions a hood from scraps of human flesh. But it is okay, he says, because his scraps were soul-less, seeded in the secrecy of a lab.

Star Shifts
Riddled with fearful anticipation we plot our paths either into the mysterious birth or the ever stretching fringe of the known. Red stars or blue stars are guiding lights.

Wonderful to be back.

I was lost in a sea of hypnagogic imagery as pain pulled me in and out of dreams.
An imploding compound eyeball.
A braid of light wisps.
Police pushing through my door.
Up a steeply inclined string.
A vibrating tangle of spectral shapes that nearly was a dream.

Imladris?
Whispers of moonlight slip through carven beams of a hallway unending. Drifting fluff of soul, aimless and ailing, I amble along. He calls a name that is mine and yet, not. I am a river. Voices are echoes, sacred harmonies so gently easing all the harm in me. A path of new moons and ritual fasts, of magic mantras and dream woven tasks is assigned to me. I agree. Finally there is rest beneath the stars, beside cascades, beyond dim and damned ever reaching hands.

24th

Hypnagogia
A field of sunflowers is actually a field of suns that are tied off and bobbing like balloons.

Messes
To hell with the mirth and mess. Flee hypocrisy. The inn is the out. Too soon it too is dirt and distress. The scatter of trash nimbly mutates into a piercing childhood haunt, monster of false memories. Escape filth and faulty flashbacks. Uneasy freedom is found in bizarre streets.