The End As Well

by Scott Becker

At the advent of morning, my dreams seem like phantom galleons that slowly drift into
the obscurity of fog. Their reality so compelling to the point of exhaustions releasing its
firm grip as if reminiscent of a now forgotten lover of the past returned briefly and
unexpectedly then at the approach of dawn's light once again departed. I struggle for a
thread or clue under the full weight of the burden of the residual feelings which provide
only sporadic mental glimpses of the narrative of the night. And I must topically sift
through these images again and again like a prospector whose claim has petered out and
must satisfy himself with dust instead of nuggets.

So, if I turn my mind to the task of reconstruction, so what then has transpired and
where is the why for it? Why were the memories of others so recent and sometimes
more distant restated in such odd panoply and yet odd custom? What engine drives the
need for these odd characters to assume strange costume and speak in paradox and
enigma? Images inset into various backgrounds and scenarios like paper dolls pasted
within a wished for world.

dreams 02-06-11

There was something iconic about her like the picture I held in my hand as I waited for
her to return in the small lot next to the row of houses in the Kerman street. I looked
over across the fenced courtyards of the one story building marveling at how life here in
Iran was in so many ways no different than where I grew up. The women wore headgear
of colorful patterns much like my own Eastern European childhood relatives as they
exited their front doors into the brightness of the morning sun.

I wandered around the wide terraced square to the band with the synthesizer and thought
about setting up my own unit thinking of all the attention that it would bring me from
curious passersby. How long had I lived here? I could recall that we had spend here in
the country when we lived up north and I thought about the absence of time not being
able to recall if it were merely days or months that she had been absent from my life.
But the icon that I stared at seemed to have the miraculous power of keeping her in real
time for me as if she had merely traveled momentarily into the next room.

I laid down next to her and placed my hand upon her knee which she propitiously frown
at maintaining her good girl pretense. She was stretched out beside me fully unclothed to
my eye saved for the heavy dark scarf that covered her hair and draped over her
shoulders. And I pondered where to put my hand in the ongoing never ending game of
the enigmas of proper Persian behavior. We lay there not speaking as if two people who
might outwardly be aware of the presence of the other. I basked like a cat in the warm
glow of our connection which seemed almost like the inspiration for life itself. She was
always with me and it seemed from the deep emotion within me that she would always
continue to eternally be.

dream 02-13-11

I couldn't figure out what was worse? The fact that this gay vampire was out to such my
semen? Or that his teeth were waiting to such my soul? He followed me around in public
where he was not far away ever waiting till my surroundings might forget that I was
there. Then he would have his chance. So I was pursued like a partridge though
classrooms bus terminals and airports. Avoiding him like a chess piece constricted by
some arbitrary rules by my class. And he always leering knowingly showing up at the
last minute of the flight so that I could not deplane. His little pin pricks flashing hungry
and waiting for both my seed and my soul.

dream 02-15-11

My father for some reason decided that he had to travel to the suburbs in the darkness of
a cloudy day and while he made some indefinable stop along the way I was left by a
farms where they professed that tires were repaired and cars fixed. In point of fact it was
a place that I had neglected to recall at the time of my being left off but as I walked
around it it was obvious that it was the territory of my ex-father inlay who though I had
only heard about him was none too happy with me. His workman around him he
exhibited a quiet form of measure belligerence that implied some pending violence for
the list of supposed wrongs that I had enacted as the lover of his daughter. For some fact
of the despoil of his racial purity or the threat of same he seemed determined that I
should be thrashed at the very least since fate and Allah had seen fit to deliver me into
his hands.

I could only imagine what had really irked him about a prospective son-in-law that he
had never seen. Someone that had led perhaps to a perpetual melancholy in his
daughter's once lively spirit. One much like the one I too was beset with by the fact of
her long absence in my life. One that had stolen her happiness away from all of us for no
decent reason beyond the relative convention of global politics that arbitrarily declared
one the enemy of the other.

dream 02-18-11

©2011 Scott Becker, 'as artist'