Dreamboat Sonata
Braxton Uribe
I dreamed I had a dream.
I was the ultimate warrior. I shot arrows of fire, and drank liquor of stone.
I would dance like I had liquid feet and titanium iliums, and mythological creatures wouldn't see me stealing timecards or hall passes.
I rocketed to moons and underground caverns. I was a true Renaissance man and God to many.
But then, I would catch a whiff of dissociated cheese curd and sue another frozen beverage stand during the taping of this autumn's most successful new drama.
I would then open my eyes and realize it was a dream.
I dreamed I had a dream that I had a dream.
I was the ultimate drug mule. I’d poop regularly but never ate a sandwich. It kept it lively.
Sometimes I would remember I had the measles and was restricted from visiting 1960s Bavaria.
I would dance around danger, and danger would pretend to be hot under the collar but then laugh at a joke I made about stealing the steak knives at the old Manchester Inn.
It was a gay time for all, but only three hours of the homosexual stuff.
But then, an otter read the fine print of the contracts we just signed to become overtaxed stevedores and we fought about the meaning of the word ’Taciturn’.
I would then open my eyes and realize it was a dream.
But then the dream would continue.
I would once again be the ultimate sandwich shop, standing proud on every street corner in a septuagenarian’s reverie.
I would hand out milkshakes like they were made of gold, and hand out gold like it was made for an automaton’s carnival.
I would dance around danger, and danger would fall over because I was a building and very heavy.
It was a gay time for all, and this time there was five hours of the homosexual stuff.
But then, a sofa would cohabitate the biodome and I shook a baby with enough force to send an astronaut to the new discount carpet store on the corner of Wilshire and Pawtucket Avenue.
I would then open my eyes and realize it was a dream within a dream.
I dreamed I had a dream that I had a dream that I had a dream.
I was the ultimate stanza of a 1930s poem by a master surrealist.
I was pure fulfillment, dripping with artistic success.
I would melt with time and only sneeze when a dog had its head patted by Orson Wells.
It shook my body, back when my body was a bronze statue.
We would laugh for hours, even forgetting the sounds of our voices, but we kept laughing.
But then I would hear a voice and forget about livestock for a while.
I would then open my eyes and realize it was a dream.
But then, the dream would continue, nested in another dream.
I was the ultimate prize at a hog weighing contest.
Whoever weighed their hog most effectively would receive me at the stroke of midnight, every night, for 58 weeks.
We would play games, write sing-a-long songs, dress marshmallows up as costume stores in the suburbs, give sunburn to the old lady that lived across the street and only had the bad kind of caramel candy, steal ideas from Einstein, and claim that all the Jews were merely a fascinating bus stop.
We would laugh for hours, even forgetting how to breathe, but we kept laughing.
But then, I would see a supernova in my oatmeal baths, and grew concerned about making a macaroni clock out of beeswax.
I would then open my eyes and realize it was a dream within a dream.
But then, the dream would continue, nested in yet another dream.
I was the ultimate Popemobile.
The pope would be all sorts of inside me and I would feel loved.
Until the bullets came and showered us with pieces of ears and arms and viscera and jagged bone shrapnel, which sunk into all the cervices. Occasionally, one would pierce the Pope in the jugular vein.
He didn’t seem to be infallible or inhalable for much longer.
But it was a blessed occasion. They served cocktail weenies at the tennis courts at Wimbledon, cucumber sandwiches at the Ol’ Fork in the Road, and buckshot at the burlesque show in the Himalayans.
Sometime after the evening blizzard of small teeth, we would mingle with Nefertiti’s bib sacks and punctuate sentences in a most haphazard way.
We would laugh for hours, sometimes forgetting how to laugh, but we kept on laughing just the same.
But then, an elevator said, "You there, with the butter basted banana hammock! I have the king of Scotland on line 4!» and I would start to maintain protein synthesis.
I would then open my eyes and realize it was a dream within a dream that was within a dream.
I dreamed I had a dream that I had a dream that I had a dream that I had a dream.
I was the ultimate saxophone. Shiny and new, my bell would ring for hours when you touched it.
It sent shivers down my spine, and undulations down my urethra.
I could have relived that moment for 1893 years, if I had been stuck in a Mobius loop, but I only had bus fare for seven stops down the line.
I remember her cold lips upon me as the moonlight shown through the public lavatory (which didn’t have any doors or ceilings due the previous year’s dust bowl). It was an odd feeling, underneath all the lectures she gave, I felt the spite dripping figuratively upon my brow. Then I remembered the phone number of the Chinese restaurant in the next town over and had to write it down immediately. I stood up, forgetting that I could remember it, and ran quickly through 78 vignettes set up by the local chapter of the Peadmont Players. They would always ask for money at breakfast.
It was a time that I would color blue in my memory.
But then, the Vietnam War broke out, and I lassoed an antique bookshelf.
I would then open my eyes and realize it was a dream.
But then, the dream would continue, nested in another dream.
I was the ultimate air bladder. Vast and languid, ferocious yet torpid.
People would see me on the block underneath another society prank gone awry. It would have been the cap to my feather.
Sometimes it all seemed like it seemed, other times we sang Bolivian folk songs to small interred testicles.
Black people would rejoice that we saved their only homoerotic bathhouse, which opened in 1957, as one of the charter members of Homo-Bath INC, a company that was founded to ensure homoerotic bathhouses would open in every major city. These new ‘Wonderful Butt Rooms’ (as they were called in the high society papers of the time) would cater to specific races, religions, and creeds. It was all going well until Harold U. Funderbarr shot off a water pistol at the third annual gathering for the Big Queer, in 1966. As a result of the many stains and under-reinforced weak spots on the undergarments, fecal vats, ancient tiger teeth, and esoteric Cartiers of the Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Speaker Of The Mount, Sub-Treasurer, and Cupcake Boy, all hope was abandoned and most of the people who gathered joined copies of themselves in the Spaceship Rocketeer, which unfortunately exploded 1,893,891 minutes into flight.
It was a time that I would color celadon in my memory.
But then, I would trip over a didgeridoo and write a eulogy for the color orange.
I would then open my eyes and realize it was a dream, nested in another dream.
But then, the dream would continue, as it was nested in another dream.
I was the ultimate Iberian Peninsula. Prideful, irradiant, vociferous, callipygian, pleated, pithy, ebullient, and avuncular.
Every time I saw the clock tower I would return to the bank vault I locked Leon Czologosz in, right after brunch on the 3rd of May.
The cruise ship then would turn hard to starboard and Valerie would spill her drink before she overdosed on heroin. I held the needle in my teeth, but forgot that I only have the handle and the trigger of the gun. Would this be the final piece of the puzzle? I jammed the gun trigger into the casaba melon and hoped! But alas, all I had left was a wounded gaseous moon.
»These decisions are above my gay pride», Rhoda said.
I tried to reason with her, but she kept repeating the 138th line in every ’Classic Of American Literature’ book we had buried underneath the potato bin.
»They shoot horses for that, don’t they?» asked a reticulated spinal angioplasty.
I tried to reason with it, but it kept pretending not to have sentience until we were alone with our thoughts and your fears.
»This raspberry tea is sweetened with the dead sea!» exclaimed a rather saturated 19th century Bobbie.
I tried to reason with him, but sadly the earthquake never allowed me to set up my minimoog just right and the chandelier was really a knapsack.
It was a time that I would color burnt Sienna in my memory.
But then, the Sudan became a free nation and I had to halt the white dwarf star from expelling stellar gases.
I would then open my eyes and realize it was a dream, nested in yet another dream.
But then, the dream would continue as it was nested in a third dream.
I was the ultimate segmented colon. Dialectical and obsequious, mellifluous but furtive, malefic yet yonic. No brash retorts required, or so they said.
The usual 30 degrees north analemma appeared free of its axis as the sky was a pure Lysol based cleaning product. Brightness filled my rectory as another chime sounded.
I sat down on an antique ottoman and starting staring at a book, »The Lollipop Of Death Chants» by T.U. Buanum.
I read aloud every fourth word, »Brittle... commonplace... functioning... eggs... hilarity... fecal... of... seventeen... republic... Amsterdam... glory... fissure... repugnant... the… formulation… disinfectant… interstice… an… spume… bioluminance… salubrious… furcular… the… the… buttress… above… gewgaw… pipeline… on… abjure… bilk… scrotal… a… alliaceous… phlegmatic… of… niggardly… giggle… sonambulatory… convivial… quash… no… toe… chiaroscuro… azimuth… too… pandiculation… lenticular… of… paragon… torrefy… black… priapism… the… bullion… cowbell… scallion.»
It was exhausting but another wonderment besieged me.
Turning the clock around, the center of the universe beamed in a loud voice with strange oud chords being played every time it muttered the sound of an ’L’, »FEEL THE WARMTH OF SOULS. DRENCH YOUR COFFEE TABLE IN UNKNOWN DISGUISES. ELABORATE SLOWLY AND WITHOUT REGARD TO THE PILLARS OF ISLAM. SPEEDBUMP OF DESTINY IS A LIQUID MEAL FOR THE ELDER SCOTCH PROCURER. FEEL THE WARMTH AND DANCE WHEN YOU NEED TO.»
Once the smoke cleared, I could see something was still on fire and the smoke was starting to return. I coughed several times.
Even though I was prevented from speaking or spanking, I wrapped the jewels in my mind’s eye. After the third vodka cranberry, I returned to »The Lollipop Of Death Chants» by T.U. Buanum.
The fourth page was the most radiant. It read:
Chapter 1: Mountains
Chapter 2: Radial Tires (Very Large & Protein Packed)
Chapter 3: Brad Richard’s Fifth Year At Alltunberry University
Chapter 4: Another Film About Peanuts
Chapter 5: Nuclear Physics & Masturbation
Chapter 6: Running Without Shoes & Singing Without Voices
Chapter 7: Anal Pucker
Chapter 8: Be The Old Studebaker Coupe Of My Dreams
Chapter 9: Brain Trusts
Chapter 10: Time Is Time’s Banana
Chapter 11: At The Curling Rink (Part 3 of 7)
Chapter 12: Grayson Ford Moves Boulders
Chapter 13: A Cross Country Flight (Is Destroyed 23 Minutes After Takeoff)
Chapter 14: When Bodies Filled The Air, Your Organs Filled My Lungs (A Love Poem)
Chapter 15: A Morality Play, In Three Acts
Chapter 15 A: The Filing Cabinet
Chapter 15 B: A Fueling Station On Uranus
Chapter 16: This Is The End Of Part I
Chapter 17: Marcy Lewis Find’s Out
Chapter 18: Printing
Chapter 19: Visions Of Angles
Chapter 20: This Is The Beginning Of Part Two
Chapter 21: Las Vegas & The Slim Petinas
Chapter 15 C: Time Out/Time In/Time Underneath/Time On Top
Chapter 22: A Loading Bay On Venus
Chapter 23: The Only Chapter That Could Be Chapter 23
Chapter 24: Fifteen Pages About A Broken Sofa
Chapter 25: Squeezing (Semen)
Chapter 26: Keys To The Rectum
Chapter 27: How I Killed The Cleaning Crew By Stella James Wolcroft
Chapter 28: Dropping Angels
Chapter 29: Tongues Of The Antichrist
Chapter 30: A Side-Note About DeWitt Fenbridge’s Ancestry
Chapter 31: The Last Chapter Before Part 3
Chapter 15 D: The Cemetery
Chapter 32: A Resolution Builds
Chapter 33: The Fichus
Chapter 34: Tramcar Diaphragm
Chapter 35: How Duke Bane Won The West
Chapter 36: This Isn’t Chapter 44
Chapter 37: The First Drug Orgy
Chapter 38: A Resolution Flourishes
Chapter 39: Fishtank
Chapter 40: The One That Will Last Forever
Chapter 41: The Whores At Linberg Station
Chapter 42: Also A Commentary On Population Density Studies
Chapter 15 E: The Morality Play Ends With Pools Of Blood Everywhere
Chapter 43: The Diamond Ring
Chapter 44: Dream Of A Time And Not A Place...
I was so enthralled I left the fence open and I was flooded with neutrinos, hadrons, and strange quarks.
It was a time I would color nyanza in my memory.
But then, stratus clouds made a logical argument for stricter land reform referendums and I went off to curate a dilapidated museum that specialized in ancient theories of sexual dimorphism and deformed genitals in Worms, Germany.
I would then open my eyes and realize it was a dream, nested in still another dream.
But then at this point I was so lost within the world of dreams I couldn’t escape my waking.
I couldn’t escape my wanking either, but then thought this wasn’t the best time for masturbation.
I attempted to wake up but would only fall asleep.
So I stayed asleep in my dream world, nesting into dream states within a dream state, where I was within a dream state of a dream state, when I started in a dream.
I was the ultimate prime number yet again. I glowed hearty and stealthy and laughed about forgetting how to laugh about dancing in my memory.
My conscious body was a manifestation of everything I wanted to be, and everything I dreamed I was. Everything was so clear and calm, joyous and magnificent. I smiled uncontrollably and lost any ability I had to concentrate properly. The emotion inside me burst out and covered my world in contentment and satisfaction. No anger or disappointment could penetrate my mind or my soul. The azure sky shined infinitely through the melted haze. Warmth surrounded my body as all questions were answered and all desires satiated. A pure transcendent bliss from that forever azure sky…
But then, my body became limp and lifeless, a mere vegetative state, that could only flop upon the world’s ground.
Unfortunately, I was a bus driver.
The bus crashed into a school for the blind and deaf at 120 MPH and everyone died a horrible, agonizing death. Children’s bodies literally exploded as the bus smashed through their fragile shells. Fountains of blood sprung up, peppering the landscape. Rivers of bodily fluids could not be contained as internal organs went flying everywhere. The building caught on fire and eventually 4/5ths of the block burnt down. The bus, not deterred by several brick walls and dozens of screaming children, flashed gloriously in the sunlight, and it continued on its death run towards many vulnerable things. The resilience of this small tube of metal, plastic, and rubber would astound for decades to come. Brick, wood, steel, iron, brass, human flesh, small woodland creatures, large farmland creatures, the thoughts of the secretly clairvoyant, physics, and all the Gods of Hinduism couldn’t stop the breathtaking force and sheer will of Conservatory 187, crosstown express. After 49 minutes, the engine was finally jettisoned causing the bus to stop inside a busy pediatricians office after leveling three bridges, four water-towers, the army base, an industrial section of town where chemicals are manufactured, two broadleaf forests, an orphanage, the oldest known carousel in the country, a museum that was hosting antiquities from the middle east, the maximum security prison, and two hospitals, with special outdoor triage units. The photographs were life changing.
I remained in my dream worlds, falling asleep by awaking and awaking by falling asleep.