I’ve had plenty of crushes
on boys by now
and only about a dozen dates
in this year, most of which
I’ll probably forget
when I’m out of my teens.
__________
Written by Patti Lauzon
Diary Entry, 8/16/64
Found by Michael Estabrook
Acton, MA
The dream is the guardian of sleep,
not the disturber of it.
—Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams,
3rd Edition, 1913
I.
The day
which has
most recently
passed
is to be found
in every
dream.
V.
She is descending from a high place
over curiously fashioned fences
which are united into big squares.
It is not really intended for climbing upon;
she is worried about finding a place for her foot,
and she is glad her dress does not get caught anywhere.
She is also carrying a large bough in her hand,
really a bough of a tree, which is thickly studded with red blossoms;
it has many branches, and spreads out.
They look like full-bloom carnelias,
which of course do not grow on trees.
While she is descending, she first has one bough, then suddenly two,
and later again only one.
When she arrives at the bottom,
the lower blossoms have already fallen off
to a considerable extent.
Now that she is at the bottom,
she sees a porter who is combing
—as she would like to express it—
just such a tree—that is, who is plucking thick bunches of hair from it,
which hang from it like moss.
Other workmen have chopped off such boughs in a garden,
and have thrown them upon the street,
where they lie about, so that many people take some of them.
But she asks whether that is right,
whether anybody may take one.
A young man says that there is no wrong in it,
that it is permitted.
VI.
Roses, tulips, carnations,
all flowers fade.
VII.
She remembers that she has
two June bugs
in a box,
which she must set free,
otherwise
they will suffocate.
She opens the box,
the bugs
are quite exhausted;
one of them flies
out
of the window,
but the other
is crushed
on the casement
while she is shutting the window,
as some one
or other
requests
her to do.
IX.
She stood at the seashore
watching
a small boy,
who seemed to be
hers,
wading into the water.
This he did
till the water covered
him,
and she could only see
his head
bobbing
up and down
near the surface.
XV.
A great hall
—many guests—
one of whom I immediately take
aside.
I say to her:
“if you still have pains,
it is really
only
your own fault.”
She answers:
“If you only knew
what pains I now have
in the neck,
stomach,
and abdomen;
I am drawn together.”
I am frightened.
She looks pale and bloated.
I take her to the window
and look into her throat.
She shows some resistance to this,
like a woman
who has a set of false teeth.
I find a large
white spot
to the right,
and at another place
I see extended grayish-white scabs
attached to curious
curling
formations.
“No doubt it is an infection,
but it does not matter;
dysentery will develop,
and the poison will be
excreted.”
XXI.
Between two stately palaces stands a little house,
receding somewhat, whose doors are closed.
My wife leads me a little way along the street
up to the little house,
and pushes in the door,
and then I slip quickly
and easily
into the interior of a courtyard
that slants obliquely
upwards.
XXIV
I made a journey
through the city.
I wandered
through changing landscapes
with a guide, who carried my things.
He carried me for some way,
out of consideration
for my tired legs.
The ground was muddy,
and we went along the edge;
people sat on the ground,
a girl among them.
At last
we came to a small wooden house
which ended in an open
window.
Here the guide set me down,
and laid two wooden boards
which stood in readiness
on the window sill,
in order that
in this way
the chasm might be
bridged.
It seemed though,
that instead of the boards, children
were intended
to make possible the crossing.
I awakened
with frightened thoughts.
__________
Written by Sigmund Freud
Interpretation of Dreams
Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc., 1995
Found by E.K. Mortenson
Stamford, CT
E.K.: The source text for these poems is Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams, 3rd edition. For this poem, I have used the 1995 edition published by Book-of-the-Month Club, Inc. The page numbers that follow refer to the poetic sections in the attached text corresponding with that 1995 edition. This long, sectioned poem is part of an original manuscript of mine entitled What Wakes Us, and serves as an anchor to one of the manuscript sections. As the manuscript explores those things that might be enough to wake is from literal or metaphorical sleep, I thought, why not include some work of sleep? Who better to “go to” than the pioneer of dream work himself? So, the roman numeral corresponds to the poetic section in the attachment, and the arabic numbers to the page numbers of the source text: I-139; V-320-321; VI-89; VII-271; IX-244; XV-178; XXI-241; XXIV-358
Two Found Poems from a Road Trip to San Bernardino, California, with my parents, for a Funeral
The Cow Poem
Cows in the water
Cows in the shade
Beautiful pasture full of cows
Cows in the woods!
Cows and their kittens
I like veal.
__________
The Ten Commandments (of traveling with my parents)
1. Don’t snap your gum.
2. Don’t ever drive that close to a semi again.
3. Follow that car!
4. Don’t put your fingers on the window.
5. Watch out for elk.
6. Tell me where we are.
7. Be ready with the money before we reach the toll.
8. Don’t eat mother’s tuna sandwich.
9. Please, don’t kill us.
10. Pass me that lotion.
__________
Written by Joseph and Sharon Andrade
Minivan trip to San Bernardino, CA, from Indianapolis, IN
Spring 2005
Found by Emily Andrade
On the Road?
Emily: “Original quotes from Joseph and Sharon Andrade during a minivan trip to San Bernardino from Indianapolis, Indiana for my Uncle Ruben’s funeral in the spring of 2005. Formed into poems to be read together by Emily Andrade, who was taking notes and a strict diary of the trip. Joseph and Sharon did not know they were being recorded and Emily did not know she had poems until the end of the trip. (A special thanks to the Andrade parents, who made these poems possible.)”
The numberless outgoings,
Of late years,
From the cities
Into the rural neighborhoods,
Of our men of wealth and culture,
Bearing with them the examples
And means of refinement
Give very gratifying promise
Of advance in the public manners and taste.
Each settlement thus made
Is a missionary station of social progress,
Which, in our ambitious
And imitative land,
Must be speedily surrounded
With a large parish of disciples,
Each going forth in turn to teach the faith,
Until the influence shall spread
Like the widening circles of pebble-broken water.
The harvest to be, by-and-by,
Reaped from this broadcast sowing
Of the seeds of the cultivated
And catholic way of life in cities
Must be healthful,
For it is the good alone who love the country
Better than the town.
With the potent spells
Of Art and Taste he summoned there
The hidden spirit of Beauty,
Until what was once unregarded and unappreciated waste
Is now a gem of nature so brilliant
As to fix the dullest gaze.
The rock-ribbed walls of our poet’s brook
Give him daily intimation of the busy world,
As they gently echo the harsh voice of the locomotive,
The passing sails fling hourly “extras”
Of human sympathy through his study window;
While on high as he seems above the great flood of life,
He only has to don the “wishing cap” of steam
And stand in the heart of the metropolis.
“You see its front porch
from the thronged thoroughfares of the Hudson;
but the grove behind it overhangs a deep-down glen,
tracked but by my own tangled paths
and the wild torrent which by turns avoid and follow–a solitude
in which the hourly hundreds of swift travelers
who pass with in echo distance
affect not the stirring of a leaf.
But it does not take precipices and groves
To make this close remoteness.
Idlewild, with its viewless other side
hidden from the thronged Hudson,–
Its dark glen of rocks and woods
And the thunder or murmur of its brook–
Is but this every wise man’s inner life
‘illustrated and set to music’?
__________
Written by Addison Richards
Harpers Monthly Magazine
No. XCII, Vol. XVI, January 1895
Found by Don Segal
Wethersfield, CT
Caught
in the crucible
of submarines
I endorse
humor,
pathos,
courage,
and deceit
woven
into nonchalance daily
heroism beneath
the ocean’s surface
this character
a unique breed
magnificent
and totally different
__________
Written by Capt. Edward L. Beach, USN (Ret);
Vice Admiral Jon L. Boyes, USN (Ret); Admiral William D. Smith, USN;
Rear Admiral Karl Hensel, USN (Ret); and Commodore R.W. Garson, RN (Ret)
War in the Boats: My World War II Submarine Battles
Brassey’s Inc., 1994, Blurbs on Back Jacket
Found by C.F. Richie
Victoria B.C.
Lineation by Sandra Leigh
Nanaimo, B.C.