I have an appointment to visit a tech school and inquire about financial aid, etc tomorrow. Wish me luck. More later.

Kalisa, Nikki, Kali, Bruce, Shawna, several other family members, and I are riding an impossibly huge glass elevator--much like the one in Detroit that over looks the lake, However, we're at the Front Street Mall in Cuyahoga Falls (another common theme in my dreams). We can look down and see the muddy brown Cuyahoga River and the real life parking lot.

This sequence was part of a larger dream that I no longer remember. I've had this dream many times and it's been exactly the same every time (another common thing for me).

My wrists are bleeding deeply like a suicide cut. I'm stumbling down Portage Trail in Cuyahoga Falls going toward Second Street but the road is reversed. The small floral area near the bridge is on the right side of the road. I can barely walk and I'm stumbling. I think the cuts were caused by a small red dragon (no legs, sharp teeth, able to fly) that I had been fighting. Finally the paramedics pull up but they won't treat me because I don't have insurance. And I can't pay cash.

End dream.

I'm in a neighborhood much like my own but one I've never visited. The time is winter and for some reason Osama Bin Laden and one of his wives and several children are spending the night at my home. They think I'm Al-Qaida.

When Bin Laden is fast asleep--we (not sure who but if feels like friends and family) drag them out to the neighbor's house and murder them in gruesome fashion. Blood everywhere, entrails--something like a Friday the Thirteenth movie. As we go to get Bin Laden, he wakes up. (Mysteriously all the blood is gone.) I tell him we were attacked and his family is missing.

Cut immediately to the next scene. Bin Laden is behind the same house that we murdered his family and he's pouring gasoline over everything. He's going to burn it all down.

End dream.

One of the inspirations for my piece Five Self.

Two Calliope Nerve contributors have new books out: Melissa Lebruin's The Rebellious Escapist and Billy Jno Hope's The Thirty Third Witness. You'll notice both are using Lulu. You may not notice that both are from the tiny island of Dominica. I hear something in the water there makes great artists.

Now I need to get cracking on a couple of my own books including my first collection of poems tentatively titled: One Nite Pig. And I've been assembling notes for a possible martial arts book.

Got a couple of days off and then it'll be two back to back three day work weeks because I have to take my holidays early. Nothing like having staffing. :) And I get my review Friday. Joy. I got in some trouble a few weeks back so I'm sure my review will be grand fun. :)

In the meanwhile, I'll enjoy my time off. Kids are off today and I have Aikido which should both be good times. Hey man, small victories. You gotta savor 'em when ever you can.

"...have no fear. Art will transform you into something meaningful." --Mike Carey

Glass City

When wings are clipped
Do Angels fly?
(I bet they run.)

The throat tells you:
The best is spent
Here
in
a Glass City.

Why go home?

when every one can see...

I was working at Burger King (common theme in my dreams) and my old boss Belinda came in. She looked like she hadn't aged a day even though it's been seventeen plus years since we worked together. I wasn't married, I was single and I was attracted to her. I went out to the lobby to greet her. When we hugged, I believe she kissed my neck gently.

In logical fashion (ha ha), we walked out the back door of the building and were suddenly at a large apartment complex. I helped her mother (an ancient, gray hair woman) up to Belinda's apartment where I was going to wait for her to change.

In the apartment a bunch of guys were sitting around drinking beer, watching football, etc but none of them were Belinda's real life husband. I tried to make some small talk but all of them were clearly jealous and wouldn't speak to me or even look my direction.

The dream then flashed to real memories of my brother Mike, Belinda, and I going to see Judas Priest (with Megadeth and Testament no less!), and hanging out at the old Cuyahoga Falls Park and Rec bar/bowling alley.

The dream ended with another real world memory of me holding her as she sobbed in my arms upset because her life had lost it's fullness and she just wanted to have fun again.

End dream. (By the way, Belinda is not the kind of girl you'd want to date and I never did.)

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust." --T.S. Eliot

"When you're only one of the things in his dream, you know very well you're not real." -- Lewis Carroll

There's poetry in these quotes. I can feel it. Now that I've taken the words in, they're destined to come back out. Just like air, I need it.

"Comics have to be on time... if your books are late, it's a death sentence--not only for the book, but for the reputation of the company." --Mike S. Miller/Abacus Comics

"Many teachers get really uncomfortable when I challenge their belief system." --Keith Pascal

"I will take your name and I will make it ink. I will find a needle as sharp as ice, as clean as God, as thin as yesterday. I will put the needle into the ink and I will write your name everywhere that is not written on me." --The Tattooist's Creed

"Our bodies tell us to love so many, but there's room in our heart for so few. We're impossibly flawed animals, aren't we?" --Brian K. Vaughan (Y the Last Man #51)

"In a city that's a gateway between now and nowhere, the Hara twins have already crossed the line of midnight. One of them isn't coming back." --Mike Carey

"What we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down." --Mary Pickford

"Come down and tear off your wings." --Mushroomhead

Mushroomhead's Savior Sorrow is the perfect metal song of foreboding angst and in regular rotation on my Misery Signal Radio station along with the angry, old school style Safe Passage by Manmade God which reminds me of the band Trouble. Damn, I love my music, it always makes me feel better. Like a little pill.

Been suffering from severe anxiety again. I'm down right sick. It's hard to move from the paralyzing fear and the pain. The rashes are more and more frequent. And lucky me, it's all in my head. If I'd known how bad my genetics really were years ago, I'd never of had kids. God, I hope they never go through this or that they ever know that I do. For years, I wondered why my Dad hung himself and more recently my cousin Brian. I don't anymore.

In no way, shape, or form, am I thinking of hurting myself (that would be stupid) but I can see why someone would. Depression kills just like cancer only it can't be seen in an x-ray or on a test.

Still I trudge on. It's all I can do. Since I'm off work today, I did manage to get up and get my kids off to school, wash dishes, read, catch up on a little TV, exercise, and do some research on trying to go back to school. Need to try find a new therapist as well.

Somewhere there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I just pray it's not the one to the other side.

"If you rest, you rust." --Helen Hayes

Calliope Nerve V: The Great Poetry Experiment featuring the work of Raymond Farr is free of charge and available now:

Measuring "bedlam" [Except for Yoshiko]

new-fangled as "bedlam" a bullet a stone
is how words put it [at hand, mid-20th century]
w/ prosody & improv: with how a tree
is a language action revolves until brkn--

"swell gal" "keen bop"
exclusively-in-the-gym-for-some-after-algebra
w/ prosody & improv: with how a tree

[& wearing the first day in Japan
page 3
except for Yoshiko...]
common usage becomes a vol. X, a no. 1
a fire-eating-hive-mnemonic-rubber-tree-
Politburo-song-ant-de-ville

in walks dominant-marcolina-criteria-schemata
fluent in 4 by 7 by 6 by 9 exclusion-narration
measuring "bedlam" from the fist of its heart
its hinterland-borders barricaded against:
prosody & improv & how a tree doth speak

but who was that bavarian hat or tongue
in town tonight? so odd & on the morrow?

Other authors include Sheila Murphy, Ariel Lee, and of course me, I'm Nobius Black.

Calliope Nerve features poetry, short lit, and unique bits. To order this issue send your snail mail address to nobius at gmail dot com. Email for submission info. To support Calliope order you Amazon products via my site: White Rabbit - *BLACK HOLE*. Back issues are also in stock.

"I'd like to thank all of my lovers." --Bush

Just read this line: "under my skin, I exist."

That's good. Real good.

Makes me want to write.

Instead I'm off to work.

"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." --Friedrich Nietzsche

Semi-Christ

I, Semi-Christ
Failing spiritual
Self Believe.

(All the dolls
They look the same.)

Like Pigs at Calvary.