After snowstorm, after gustful & steelgray afternoons & mornings, after one last serious go at winter
yellow light the tender hue of piss or narcissus leaks past the sunfamished ficus & cagebird cage
via the eastward windows. I sit in a westward room observing. Drowsing after au lait & OJ
trying to remember/not remember the nightdreams I have yet to record: tricked into entering
the great gray monolith I found myself imprisoned, at the mercy of a grim tyrant.
It was very 1984. The dream went on for years. We lived in tiny cells. We left them only when summoned.
When summoned we strode the corridors escorted to a despot's forbidding offices.
We dared not attempt escape - such adventurers were murdered or else tortured & returned.
Yet we did attempt it. "We" - two or three of us acquainted via our common misery.
We shifted away from our watchers & sidled out to a walled yard ("just act natural")
to where a gate groaned open on a patch of thoroughfare. Our hearts raced to glimpse it.
But the opening closed again & we were reassimilated.
Without incident
& without escape.