Getting older, I find I don’t get
freaked out too much by the interior anymore.
If I have a dream, for instance,
of killing a policeman with a pair of pruning shears,
or having sex with my dead brother,
—and I mean after he is dead—
it doesn’t make me feel in need of therapy.
It doesn’t make me afraid
of falling asleep again tonight,
or worry that other drivers stopped in traffic,
glancing over at my car, will recognize the profile
of someone who ought to be in jail.
A dream like that? I just look at it
as if it was an octopus
in a big glass jar of formaldehyde
on a shelf in a laboratory
of some biologist in France.
its long green tentacles
float dreamily around,
like hair. It glows
and changes. There is nothing
more common than abnormality.
Knowing that as a fact,
in case you were wondering,
that’s what getting older is good for.
Gulf Stream Magazine 