The Only Time I Dream the Blog...

...is the first night. I dream I'm having trouble with my Cost of the Iraq War counter. It stalls completely, then slowly picks up speed as it begins counting behind as I imagine the spent votes in Ohio look counting down the freedoms backwards. Money unravels as hundreds of millions unpeel. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I spend most of the dream trying to decide as I paste and repaste code, publish and republish, but the results stay the same. Something's not true. Or, if it is, we shall win this war: dignity, justice and peace prevail; someone is eating well on the land in the land. Free and true? The deleted pages. I woke up disturbed, unresolved. It took a long time to feel it didn't actually happen.

Last night I tell T, "Every once in a while my father will say something that just gongs me out...(long pause)...for a couple of decades." He laughs. He knows. He's heard it. The first time I was 18 & had just written a poem that would get anthologized ad verbatum, "Refugee Ship." He said: "Where's the solution? You state the problem but there's no solution." I am still writing the string of formuli for that one. The last time was when he was looking at "Coffee." He said: "What does it do to take away the sadness? How does it do anything to take away that sadness?"

"It tells the truth." I don't know if that is the answer but it was my answer then to my dying father.

As my counter goes into numbers I can't read any more, some foreign tongue, como pita con lengua frita.