poison

went to bed couldn't drag sleep thinking
of the year of living poisonously
thinking of being told I'd maybe be seen over coffee nowhere
of sleeping alone ten years
and being alone a much longer time with a bitter mom
and a furious father, hiding in a closet and panic coming in this night waking,

thinking of "mom, mom" said in my heads and nights my son wakes me blinded
and then a snake large and elaborate
starts to move back and forth
through the spaces
that are now a home underwater
(i'd cleaned the aquarium where things are so amiss tonight)
in my two day three day work hiatus with a warring tummy and illness brewing
this snake moving in the house of water
that is now my home with a father fish researcher
who i can't see exactly as anyone i know
i call him screaming, screaming and he does come
and somehow he is never bothered in his work of the wall and door
not seen through the walls of science and meanings

he loves this snake and stares as one might in a mirror
but the kids (i am ranting) it will get the kids
please the kids think of the kids face this
they will be, if not now, one day, poisoned
and i'm in fear for my life. I'm begging.
he kills it, beheads it, after he moves me behind a door
closes the door. They are alone, in fact I can't see him
i don't think he'll kill it, and I'm so hurt.
Hurt in a way that I feel through the dream.
but he shows the head wrapped in something
then he's somehow himself taken by his assurance. It won't
do anything to him, it's like watching a horror film.

Over in the water, or on the floor, he's hurt by venom
9the house on the edge of a pier
or something right at the water)
and the father is somehow gone with this, as he should be?
As in dead and gone.
I dont know it all screams at you with silence
a plate with water with drips from the fangs got him.
It's unclear to me now, it was clear then
and then the dream went on into other things of the then.
Relief and things that had siblings iI do not have
(this is the way it is for me my mind is less now
i think i am suffering from memory issues)
and unfamiliar explanations of this
other fishy things
and on and on like a net of dream nonsense but
i pulled awake to write this down in the right now
as i went to sleep this night in utter
confusion and i remember gale( forgetting this followed the snake)
and anise were in my dream
i was talking to him at the table in that house
about how he backed out of running against senator byrd,
how he was encouraged to run, he told me as he might really talk,
of wanting to live without these pressures
and i asked, as i might, about their trip to china
and trips to see the world, wanting to hear more of travels.
Telling them of the poison, the snake the children
and then I pulled into being awake to think that
i understood everything about the year
having looked hard at all the writing and words and pieces without
understanding what was i
thinking. On going to sleep saying I'm so sad and ill
and on and on saying that too, too much to index even
such oddity and fragility
such exposure and such an awareness of loss and repulsion
and the snake wound through all of it
all of it.

Not, the old man said lovingly,
at all harmful if left alone
as if the two of them were somehow related
at least in some kind of admiration
and i woke up with this stomach turning in utter anxiety

typing