Right after I wrote this I put it on the "Work in Progress" page while I grunted through a couple of revisions. As the introduction, I had a pretty good description of the circumstances under which the poem was written, which I neglected to save for the "What it's about" thingy. The meaning of the poem is pretty much what it says, except that I don't, in fact, lie about my dreams, except perhaps through ommission. (Not to say that I've never had a violent dream.) Most of the images are from dreams I've had. (Not that you give a rip.) I had just gotten up, was struggling my way into consciousness, drinking coffee, waiting for the computer to boot up, and I looked down at this volume of poetry by Jim Carrol. I had been getting less and less patient with the guy. I mean, he really can't write his way out of a paper bag. On top of that, he doesn't seem to have ANYTHING to write about. (He used to write about heroin. So I guess this is an improvement.) To top it all out, the only reason I bought the damned volume was for the poem "Eight Fragments for Kurt Cobain," which I had heard him read on one of those MTV spoken word things back in the early 90's, and when I got to it I found (after many readings) that the one line that really made the thing sing was gone. And there's Carrol, posing in his leather Boho against a backdrop of urban decay, playing the part of the hard-eyed, cynical postmodern poet, here to Tell It Like It Is, and I think "Screw you, Carrol." (Not the words I used.) "I bet you lie about your dreams." By this point the computer was ready, so I dialed up the web page and tottled this out. After a couple of revisions it got really mean.

OK, honesty time: I didn't have much hope for this the first time 'round. I thought it was too self-indulgent, and a little light on the epiphany as well, not a whole lot of epistemological bang for the buck. I shot a sneak preview to Doc Nagel, & his reaction was, in a word, "Whoa!" So I kept it and worked on it.