Hypnogogic, In Full View, Lucid: One Dream

You Know Where You've Been
Candy Shue
Hypnogogic

ordinary                 the ghost girl’s
darkness this            singed hair sign
 
night this room            what say you?

bloody blue             breaths linked s’s
an arm floating             red     blue     white
before my eyes            along vivid vertebrae

    hello in there!        my heart

what say you snake         shaped hollow
rising spine-side            holding a chorus

coals stoking            — lightning
the inner coil            lighting me up
 
it’s all semantics            the mind sings
    
this hanging horse         and in morning
its rider on fire             the sun

made a home            — light
my walking dream            wakes

In Full View of an Audience the Dreamstage Subject Sleeps Naturally

Her brain activity displayed on the walls of the exhibit.

If I say “Red is my favorite color,” will you understand what I mean?

Drums made of human bone call the dead, based on the law of similars.

We carry the seeds of conditioning wherever we go; if you mistreat an animal, it becomes afraid.

We become tributaries, basins; we are pools, ponds, streams, and sanctuaries.

Red is a lucky color for the Chinese.

But you are not your heart. You are the experiencer of your heart.

Doctrine is meaningless to it.

A different mind is required to receive it.

Tantra means technique.

Whenever the mind says something, think twice.

Lucid: One Dream

my open eyes
look around

    oh there you are

my dreaming one
and I nod to me

I and one am I
I am and one am

and I am one

thinking thoughts
words nested
relation to my body
 
    empty
    objects
    of words

awake I say

    the same dream

words said to
me I don’t like

any better

except I am
saying them

You Know Where You’ve Been By Where You End Up

An amateur I
rely on binoculars

    and birdcalls

        for perceptions

    in my spine

        mirrors
        circling

    around the spot
 
        where you have

    been

    *

Only an amateur I

    would think what

        she says is

what she means

    Hedgerow
    rather than
    thicket, thicket
    rather than brush

    *

I sit in these black branches

    lightning flashes
    from cloud

        to cloud

my little tree

    a house

    I have grown

        into

    *

I struggle to see through

    twilight
    hedgerow

a thicket fills

    my spine

    branching off
    the central trunk

    *

Dendrites laden with black

    birds perched
    on my outermost

        boughs
    
    little mirrors struggling

    to draw rings
    around the spots

    where you have
    
        been

    *

Amateur

    I wield sharp

    clippers with good

    intentions

struggle
    
    thicket into
    hedgerow

        *

This central trunk

    conducts
    
        heat

    and light

as asphalt intensifies

    the sun’s signs

    . . . 101 degrees, 102, 103, 104 . . .

emotion

    the occasional
        groundstrike    
        
    Ah yes, I remember

    *

Silhouettes of ravens

    thicket of inky branches

as another weather

    moves through my mirrors
    
            drawing close

    rings around
    where

        I have been

Candy Shue
Candy Shue

Candy Shue earned her MFA from the University of San Francisco where she was awarded a merit scholarship for poetry.  The recipient of a Kundiman Fellowship, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in EOAGH 8, VersalSpiral OrbEratioThe CollagistSwitchbackPoemeleon, and Washington Square, and her book reviews can be heard on the online show, Poet As Radio.