Die Traumdeutung

This time, I'm listening on the radio

The explosion, even on speakers

Rattles my ribcage. There are screams

Chaotic shouts, voices I think I know

Or maybe I don’t, and then silence

This is the new Age of Anxiety

If I am a camera, I see three starfish in the bed

All of us dreaming, one of us too young

Too have learned to dream in red

Jump cut to a wide shot of the sky

Three hundred million fists clenched tight

All these months I’ve slept

With a pencil tied onto my finger

Thinking that it might help me sleep

But instead I find I'm left

With these photographs that only linger

After I write down what I’ve seen

After the silence, a change of scene. I'm

In some kind of safe house, having my

Head shaved, being trained as an assassin

I think these images must spring

From the vault of action movies

I have stockpiled on sleepless nights, on

Transatlantic flights over the ocean

For tours, a relic of an earlier age

When we sat in airport lounges drinking Scotch

Eating pretzels, watching cable news

Oblivious to the mess that I was making for you