Poem: The Walt Taborski Dream

By Jack Brummet

Walt Taborski starred
In a recurring dream
When I was eight years old.

I dreamed I was dreaming
And kept hearing
A tap tap tap.

I thought the tapping
Was the dream
And woke up.

The tapping started again.
I didn't know if I was awake
Or awake in the dream.

I dreamed I was dreaming
I slid out of bed
And edged along the hallway

Toward the tapping
On the kitchen window
Facing the big blowsy roses

In the backyard.
When I got to the kitchen,
His face was in the window.

Framed by the roses
And darkness
Was the unearthly face

Of Walt Taborski,
Peering in, moving his head
Side to side

In his steel-grey fedora,
Stiff wool overcoat,
And coke-bottle glasses.

His eyes bore down on me.
I coudn't scream
And I couldn't move.

I couldn't look at those eyes,
But with those eyes,
I had no choice;

I could only stare
At the Peeping Tom
Petrified anything I did

Would cause him to burst in.
I inched away
Nearly motionless

As if slow
Would buffalo him,
And he wouldn't actually see me

Drift from his focal point
Imperceptibly backing up
To the perceived safety

Of my room.
At the end of the hall,
I could cut and run.

The sheets in my bed were cold
When I climbed back in.
In the morning,

And every time I dreamed the dream,
I never knew
If it was him

Or me dreaming
Him in the window,
And I never told anyone

About Walt Taborski looking
In the window
Until tonight.
---o0o---

Poem: Dreams

by Jack Brummet

I think about dreams―not drifting
like this, but real R.E.M. dreams.

I don't know which is better―
to dream it or see it,

to see it right now,
or to have seen it.

I don't know which is better,
the memory or the thing itself.

The memory can be repeated forever
but loses fidelity like an old record

and the fictions your mind confects
start filling in the gaps

until the memory becomes a framework
for what we wanted to be, or what should have been.                      

                ---o0o---

I had a dream last night about a strange bar in Portland

click to enlarge

---o0o---