51/59: Too Too Tangle

[rejectomorph]

Saturday night I slept restlessly, and several times had to get up to untangle my twisted blankets. I think I had dreams, but don't remember them, only fleeting images and a vague uneasiness each time I woke, as when a cloud shadow unexpectedly dims the sunlight. When I finally got up I felt sore all over, as though I'd been in a fight, and clearly I had been, with my bedclothes. But I have no idea why. What did I ever do to those fabrics, aside perhaps from neglecting to wash them often enough? And what did those mere fabrics ever do to me? All they were trying to do was keep me warm, which was just what I'd expected of them.

Well, I guess there were those times they'd tried to trap me or trip me, and I might have... did in fact... curse them. But then to attack me in my sleep? It seems so underhanded and unfair. I'm now a bit worried about my nap later today. Will I be safe? Can I continue to protect myself in my ache-weakened state? Will my lifeless body be found days hence, a blanket tightly wrapped around my throat, my unlit eyes bugged out, my swollen tongue protruding from my forever-stilled mouth? Hell if I know, but it seems I might now have more material for those distressing dreams I can't remember. Maybe I'll just turn the furnace way up and sleep without blankets.




Sunday Verse

A Supermarket in California

by Allen Ginsberg

          What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.
          In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
          What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles
full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!—and you,
Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

          I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the
meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
          I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price
bananas? Are you my Angel?
          I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you, and
followed in my imagination by the store detective.
          We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting
artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

          Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does
your beard point tonight?
          (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel
absurd.)
          Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to
shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
          Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in
driveways, home to our silent cottage?
          Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you
have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and
stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?