i’m given to understand freud said
we are all of us imprisoned by our dreams.
but i’m shut right now in a small room with no windows
(artificial light, overhead and flickering)
and have no way to verify whatever freud may
or may not have said, regarding dreams and prisons.
last night i was imprisoned with cream cheese cupcakes.
i’d never had them before and they were delicious.
i peeled their papers back, pressed my fingertips down onto
the crumbs that fell from them onto the table also imprisoned with me,
and licked my fingertips. the cream cheese was the color of butter.
the cupcakes were cupcake yellow.
some nights i find myself imprisoned with my best friend,
though he has been dead many years. last night he was still dead,
and i was trying to make sense of the mess he left behind.
he had not turned his calculators off, nor left any instructions.
this was before (prior to) the cream cheese cupcakes.
i complained to shadowy dream people imprisoned with me
about my best friend’s machines. the shadowy dream people later
shared with me the cream cheese cupcakes.
i like the sound of the phrase, cream cheese cupcakes,
though i didn’t particularly care to share any of them, and i’m not—
never mind. some nights i share my prison with a woman i had hoped
both to love forever and to have stopped loving some years back.
looks like forever is the winner, so far.
i’m imprisoned with forever, which gives me the entire universe
as my incarcerated companion. the man who has it all,
including the dream of a beautiful cellmate,
and a telephone in this small room with no windows
(overhead light, artificial and flickering). it may ring, this phone.
(Published in J Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 2009; copyright 2009, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
my son has a sister who is not his
mother’s daughter and another who is
not his father’s little girl. the first of
these two half-sisters has herself two half-
siblings in virginia, while the second
is closely related to several
persons in hawaii. we progenitors
(several inter-breeding mothers and
fathers) are, or may be, closely related
to people in colorado
texas
ohio
tennessee
scotland
france
germany
the netherlands
and possibly viet nam
now that we’re so many of us closer
cousins than we may suspect, sex seems not
quite so advisable, at least not for
procreation (pace his eminence
the holy father, with his children of
a different sort). the bunny-rub feels
so good, this is true, and there is nothing
to match a good orgasm (is there any
other kind?), but we could accidentally
generate to follow in our wayward
footsteps an even stupider gener-
ation than our own, unless we decide
to hell with the consequences, dub ourselves
royalty, and set to interbreeding
like the kings and queens whose offspring were
hemophiliacs and at least one world war
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“I have studied these people for many years. We are in Normandy; the soil is rich and easily tilled. Around this stack of corn there is rather more comfort than one would usually associate with a scene of this kind. The result is that most of the men, and many of the women, are alcoholic. Another poison also, which I need not name, corrodes the race. To that, to the alcohol, are due the children whom you see there: the dwarf, the one with the hare-lip, the others who are knock-kneed, scrofulous, imbecile. All of them, men and women, young and old, have the ordinary vices of the peasant. They are brutal, suspicious, grasping, and envious; hypocrites, liars, and slanderers; inclined to petty, illicit profits, mean interpretations, and coarse flattery of the stronger. Necessity brings them together, and compels them to help each other; but the secret wish of every individual is to harm his neighbour as soon as this can be done without danger to himself. The one substantial pleasure of the village is procured by the sorrows of others. Should a great disaster befall one of them, it will long be the subject of secret, delighted comment among the rest. Every man watches his fellow, is jealous of him, detests and despises him. While they are poor, they hate their masters with a boiling and pent-up hatred because of the harshness and avarice these last display; should they in their turn have servants, they profit by their own experience of servitude to reveal a harshness and avarice greater even than that from which they have suffered. I could give you minutest details of the meanness, deceit, injustice, tyranny, and malice that underlie this picture of ethereal, peaceful toil. Do not imagine that the sight of this marvellous sky, of the sea which spreads out yonder behind the church and presents another, more sensitive sky, flowing over the earth like a great mirror of wisdom and consciousness—do not imagine that either sea or sky is capable of lifting their thoughts or widening their minds. They have never looked at them. Nothing has power to influence or move them save three or four circumscribed fears, that of hunger, of force, of opinion and law, and the terror of hell when they die.” – Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee