from Asleep Beneath the Hill of Dreams,
Ghost Road Press 2010
Dream of the Synesthete
You wake up in a bed soft as yellow,
aroma of crushed almonds wafting from the
number 6 on your alarm. Red dawn
wets drawn drapes coarse as sandstone. In your
dark dream, interrogators strained flavors from a
man’s tongue, one by one. He cried for mercy
and they gave him chocolate decadence
he could not taste, though his mouth filled with
vibrations, mellifluous woodwinds,
oboes and bassoons bruising flesh.
It’s a winter Tuesday, cold air so loud that
squirrels drop dead from branches
into piles of fallen leaves that sound like
musk, a smell sharp as an axe hacking
into a stump. Sweet orange juice
tastes cacophonous and scalding coffee
gutters in your mouth, a candle wick
dancing in wind. You smell the burning
too late, your body already afire,
emanating cinnamon and power chords.
Peaches hum, ripening in a bowl, and
morning tastes like a callused finger
probing your gelatinous heart. You would
like to know why the birds sing backward,
their tunes almost familiar as they reverse
between beaks. You’ve never been bitten
by the neighbor’s dog but it barks and you
flinch, feeling cold water splash your face.
Damn that dog, damn the sun playing
arpeggios of grape essence in your brain.
A bullhorn blurts your vanilla-flavored
name and two policemen made of incense
apply bright handcuffs that render you mute.