The artist is a selfish creature
Indulgent, yet sublime
For those thoughts by day she dare not speak
She nightly marks in rhyme

Still, ever still, that silent voice
that does not echo or resound
but simply speaks, as though nearby
and says, “You know now what you are.”

How to Become Invisible in Your Dreams

Whether you want to become invisible to avoid parental or spousal expectations, the prying eye of corporations and the state, or just to escape society’s absurd expectations for female beauty, this handy guide will set you in the right direction. Don’t worry if you want to be invisible in real life, too–once you’ve done it in your dreams, the real thing comes easy. Let’s start with the basics.

1. Dismiss your other powers. No more fireballs thrown at old bullies. No more healing bitten apples and broken bones. To become invisible is to diminish. If the demons in your dreams see so much as a shadow, you have failed.
2. Learn to hide. In this early stage of your preparation, I recommend the deepest, darkest corners you can find. Follow one of your monsters home, when the poor sucker thinks you’ve chickened out and woken up. Don’t be afraid–at least not of monsters. If you stay with them long enough, they will acclimate to your presence, and consider you one of their own.
3. Learn to step out of your body. Leave it somewhere safe–six feet under should do–and slide into the walls. With your heart racing, flood the earth and become the wind that soars upwards screaming, that cannot be held, and aches at the thought of being seen. If the world were not a prison, you would have no need to become invisible in your dreams. Leave it behind.

Tips

If in spite of all of your precautions, you begin to change, fight it. Look in the mirror in your dreams every night, no matter how painful. Pull away your clothes from your back, and if you see something thin and white growing out of your shoulder blades, grind it back down to dust. Keep the scabs covered, and keep them hidden in a dark place. If you do this every night, you stand a chance of being invisible forever, and that’s what you want, isn’t it?

beauty, she knew, was skindeep

but so much deeper than skin
the bone which misshaped her
so much deeper than skin
the flesh that erased her

so she slipped needles skindeep
delving to find the combinations of colors
that might open the lock she spent
so long trying
trying to pick

from the corpse she coaxed a canvas
a Rauschenberg throwaway built in layers
a natural ivory a peach pink and a rouge
black all around her still blank eyes

reddened they rise
to meet the mirror
blood mixed with ink
under the skin

beauty, she knew, was skindeep.

This will be an unofficial blog post, so no word of the day for you this time. I’d like to share the dream I had last night with you, and see what you think.

I dreamed that everyone in the world carried around umbrellas, and an evil magician was tinkering with them. Whenever her spell hit someone, they would look up and see a second umbrella inside the first, and just above them, holding the umbrella, an exaggerated and perverse version of themselves. I don’t know if anyone else could see what was inside the inner umbrella but them, but I do know it was what they thought others saw them as. Thought, or feared. Near the end of my dream, when I had somehow managed to solve whatever the problem was (I think it involved killing seahorse monsters? I don’t know man), I left the room hidden in my old church where me and the others were hiding, the walls of the narrow room covered with electric candles, and spoke to a man in the churchyard.

“All you have to do,” I told him, pointing up at his umbrella within an umbrella. “All you have to do to make that go away is realize that the real you is the one holding the outer umbrella. The version of you up there doesn’t exist. Maybe it did once, in parts, but now it doesn’t matter.”

He looks up, at his umbrella within his umbrella and the mangled figure inside. He looks like some sort of odd balancing act in a circus, the second figure a solid ten feet above him.

Meanwhile, we seem to have attracted some monsters, and I pull out my sword.