I’m dreaming this dream within a dream, where I’m seemingly lucid within the dream, and scurrying around between life-like characters, shouting, “Wait, stop! Look! Wake up!” Many of them are moaning, from emotional and physical pain, as if there were a war at the beginning of the dream, and this is the fallout. Some of them, however, are happily riding bikes, making bank deposits, reciting poetry, and so on. Apparently, they were not in the beginning of the dream, so they’re oblivious to the mayhem.

Good thing. I leave them to their bikes, banks, and poems. This is triage after all. Finally, out of a feeling a bit like sheer exhaustion, I guess (all tired out, in a dream!), I see that even screaming “Wake up!” is a bit silly. The dream goes on, in spite of my exhaustion.

Like zombie lore, perhaps I figured that to see one is to know one, that this is how zombies gather together–safety in numbers, secret handshake, and all that. And we’re all zombies here! But very few are actually paying any attention to me. (I do get the occasional wink and knowing smile, but these characters just appear, more like the face of the Cheshire Cat, and disappear as soon as they are noticed.) The moaning and the poetry readings go on at the same time, in the same place. Oh, my gosh. What a beautiful, full, rich dream this is! Colorful, loud, dramatic–with a kind of neorealism feel to it, like The Bicycle Thief. Not in black and white, though. Not this one.

And for a moment, in this dream, there is the thought, “Just be sarcastic, that’ll do the trick. Sarcasm does wonders when it comes to snapping people out of a somnambulist reverie, right?” And so sarcastic comments flash through the mind, as I walk and look upon the wounded and the oblivious. But I haven’t the heart, or the stomach. Or, the mouth opens, but nothing comes out. It’s like that, sometimes, in dreams. And, these images are starting to fade around the edges anyway, and morph into something unrecognizable. I can’t even see my own body, come to realize, and don’t know who or where I am, just the viewer of this dream, apparently. Is that moaning coming from me? Or, do I love poetry, too? I watch the disappearing and the morphing (or, it is observed), and seem to have lost my objective here, all that shouting and screaming. So what’s the point, I think, sarcastically?!

Oh, to wake up. It’s a dream, silly. That’s all that I can recall, for the moment…

Wait! I find myself looking out a window that opens out into a miniature garden, telling this dream to what appears to be a very attentive, very red cardinal, resting patiently on a budding branch. Like he’s really listening.

Oh, crap! Dreaming again! Like Wiley Coyote and the Road Runner, the game never stops.