Alan CATLIN
The 37 Dreams of Franz Kafka
"Kafka had thirty-seven dreams in his life
and only one concerned sexual activity."
-Anne Carson
are cinematic as slow motioning-
the lost art of silences filmed,
captioned in white caps-short subjects-
he dreams- a cabaretist ragtiming
banded in half-timed light-keys to
locked mining veins-a heart breaking,
pulse jamming dream of tigers,
many faceted beasts woven from
the tapestries of abandoned monastery
walls-he dreams-the eel dreams,
the arachnid dreams-the one where
scorpions scream-cross cutting dreams-
scores a mimetic music for pits dug
deeper than a man's stuffed head totem
polling as he digs his way further under
ground deeper than the blood slickened
cows-unsure as he proceeds whether
to read inscriptions on the walls or to be
as blind men are, always groping for the dark.
Dreamscape with Xylophone
Couched by a pitched waste
of black, an off-center view,
hedging, dissolving at the edges,
a near failure of footlighting,
overheads, interiors:the performance
master is a shapeshifting colluder
with shadows-his nearly withheld Art-
those bonethin, fleshless arms contained
by-shiny with age-formal wear, meta
carpals resolved to hold the rigid
weighted sticks for turning metal
keys into music, to resound, make
magic with that balanced board
for playing-sheen polished-reflective
light cast up to reveal shielded
by membranes, stained glass eyes
a pallorous, dimming wane of light
mirroring the funereal lowing,
the lost resolve of notes.
Impossible Landscape with Common Crows
An arrangement of fruit has no
center of gravity, no resting place
to root them in the artist's eyes-
falling as they are as if hurled
from great heights, these damaged
pears, bruised apples, misshapen
bananas, black cherries cored to
the pits, seedless grapes partially
skinned, discolored fruit exposed-
all plummeting through a nebulous
emulsion, a dull, almost colorless,
almost lifeless medium-an indefinite
place for a sudden abundance of
common crows invading- their black
beaks open as if to snare plunging
fruit or to speak among themselves
of the unspeakable; this uncertainty
of place-neither up nor down-all
their hapless fluttering will neither
alter nor amend their condition.