I.
 
Five minutes: that’s the average stretch
for which the pillowed psychonaut
 
will wander. Such excursions
were chiseled on stone tablets
 
as early as 3100 B.C. This, the act
of “condensation,” precipitory really–
 
beads of water on our foreheads,
a rain that has always, already come.
 
 
II.
 
We “go” to sleep. We vacation there,
swaddling ourselves along its dunes
 
to hear our blood thrash back and forth,
lapping at our little boat. Note how,
 
in the Upanishads, there are two kinds
of dreams: the mere expression of craving–
 
I need I fear I want I strain I covet—
and the utter evacuation of the body.
 
 
III.
 
In terms of both dream length and frequency,
the order goes like this: possums, horses,
 
us–all swept up in the ghosting current
of memorized recombinants, backwater,
 
all of us dangled in the warm, black air.
 
 
IV.
 
Freud said:
 
Subconscious Oraculum Womb Repression Phallus etc.
 
Possum says:
 
Hang, inebriate. Be bright
mathematics. Build
night cities. Pile
amalgams. Invert
the firmament. Set loose
the stray dogs of orchestra.
 
 
V.
 
Time, after all, can be said to dilate
inside the body, the parietal lobe
 
flexing its muscle, pouring its oil
like chemical horses, seeking music.

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Robert Campbell is a poet living in Lexington, Kentucky. His work has appeared in River Styx, Zone 3, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Robert holds an MS in Library Science from the University of Kentucky and is currently an MFA candidate at Murray State University. He serves as Reference & Instruction Librarian at Transylvania University and Reviews Editor at DIALOGIST.