Evidence

This was a dream, but you have no idea how easily it could have been reality.

 

A plate of half-eaten

Squash casserole,

A soda

Opened, and left out

On the counter –

Last night,

Sometime past one,

My roommate did

Come home.

Abduction

Don’t know why last night my mind had abduction on the brain. But apparently it did.

 

They have abducted us.

Forced to work for this cruel

Couple, we live in a house

More suited to owning a puppy

Than people. I can’t blame

My friend for not believing me

At first, but I’m so desperate,

Now I’ve finally been let out

For something, to make someone

Realize. Can’t you call the cops?

No, they’d know, and anyway

No phones are in our pockets

Now. I’ll be beaten just for

Trying to tell, and there

Outside the window, stalk

The tall man and the blonde

Woman who have come to take

Me back, their faces grim.

I resolve to fight them off

However I can, and my friend,

I think, begins to see it now.

Scene

I think watching the CinemaSins of Mortal Kombat combined with seeing something involving the Lutece twins from Bioshock created the foreground of this dream. The rest of it I have no idea.

 

I watch the scene all the way through,

Though the others have already started scribbling –

The excuse on my lips is that I haven’t

Seen this in so long, I can’t remember,

But really there’s just so much going on.

It’s daunting – Our task, to write

A short sort of novelization of the action,

Simply won’t flow from my pencil.

Abduction, boat rides through choppy

Night seas, fights with monsters and

Clanging swords that spark. My eyes

Are glued, but how to describe such a

Powerful part, and in voice, too?

Bitten

Happy Fourth of July, says my brain, have some zombies.

 

We’re walking down an open highway,

Blue sky,

Gulls,

When it gets me.

Thank God

For long

Pants.

Because, through the jeans,

The bite may not have infected –

We’ll have to wait the three days to be sure.

Meanwhile, we pull our corpse catch

Into an old house, question her about the

Others’ movements. She’s

Surprisingly alert, for a zombie, and since

We’re all looking for a cure anyway,

I have hope.

Pull back

The pant leg

In the bathroom, where the others

Can’t look.

Two

Long

Welts.

One has very slightly

Broken

The skin.

Through jeans, though,

You can never tell.

I swap stories with the zombie

About who’s a zombie

And sit down to wait the three days.

The Benefits of Keeping Friends Up to Date

Sometimes my dreams follow movie logic.

 

The hounds of the Apocalypse are on us,

So I suggest we take one car –

My family and friends, and the family

We recently met inside the bunker.

I run to catch up to our acquaintances,

Their green van already ready to go,

And they smile and say of course

They have enough room. My grandparents

Squeeze into the back, myself and

My mom share a small front seat.

It’s only when we start to drive

That I ask where Dad is, and

The driver asks, didn’t he die?

We swerve back around, into the

Territories of hellspawn as I explain,

No, it only looked like it to you,

In the way action movies like to

Deceive the audience.

Indentured

I know exactly where this dream came from, though thankfully last week did manage to end on Friday.

 

I will never leave this place.

First Monday, though my duties to

The actual event ended last week.

Now Tuesday. Still, he tells me I

Cannot leave just yet – I must clean

Every wall, press every sheet, and

Only then can I be free.

Deluge

On weeks when I have anything to do, dreams don’t stay with me when I wake up. But it was refreshing to kick it off again with rain.

 

We sit beneath a gray-dark

Sky, trading stories while we work

With pencil and paper to plan our

Next events. It smells of rain,

And as I look up to say it the clouds

Burst, drenching us all in a second.

We run inside, laughing at my clairvoyance.