Real Nightmares a Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the College of Arts

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Real Nightmares

A thesis presented to

the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts

Jayme Russell

June 2011

This thesis titled

Real Nightmares

JAYME RUSSELL

has been approved for

the Department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences by

Mark Halliday

Professor of English

Benjamin M. Ogles

Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3

ABSTRACT

RUSSELL, JAYME C., M.A., June 2011, English

Real Nightmares

Director of Thesis: Mark Halliday

This is a group of poems, prefaced by an attempt to explain Dario Argento’s influence on me as a poet and how our approaches to writing about dreams, nightmares, and the flimsy line between reality and consciousness coincide. In dreams we build our reality. In both Argento’s films and my poems this construction of inner and outer space, as well as the emotion attached to that space, is essential. The characters, in both the poems and the films, represent different identity roles that we all struggle with.

Approved: ______

Mark Halliday

Professor of English 4

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to Ike Oden, who endlessly read these poems in every draft form.

Thanks to my son Dylan Yonker, who recently recognized how hard writers work.

Thanks to my fellow writers and friends Damien Cowger and Ashley Cowger for workshop feedback. Thanks to Mark Halliday, Jill Rosser, and Eric LeMay for support and understanding.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………………3

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………...4

INTRODUCTION: DISCOVERING IDENTITY IN DARIO ARGENTO’S SURREAL

FILMS…………...………………………………………………………………………...7

Works Cited……………………………………………………………………...20

REAL NIGHTMARES.………………………………………….……………………....21

I. The Child

You have made me Mnemosyne………………………………………....23

Frankenstein’s Zombie…………………………………………………...24

Soar…………………………………………………………………...... 25

White Shadows…………………………………………………………..26

Voyeur…………………………………………………………………...27

I Don’t Want to Play……………………………………………………..28

Riding Upside-Down…………………………………………………….29

II. The Child Changes

I Was………………………………………………………………..……31

Mangosteen………………………………………………………………33

We Know Basements and Attics………………………………………....34

Moon Madness…………………………………………………………...35

Mind the Gap………………………………………………………….....36

Synaptic Gap……………………………………………………………..37 6

On the Table……………………………………………………………...38

III. The Mother

Latches Do Not Lock and Hinges Do Not Hold…………………………40

The Town Police Insist I am Paranoid All Summer………………..……41

Slice of Life…..………………………………………………………….42

Spiraling…..……………………………………………………………...43

Sacrificial Stare………………………………………………………….44

Internal Instincts……….………………………………………………..45

A One-Sided Conversation……….……………………………………..46

Dreams Born……………………………………………………………..47

IV. Reflections

Looking Glass Girl…………………………………………………….....49

Reality Checks to Gain Lucidity…………………………………………50

Directed Dreams……..…………………………………………………..51

Memory Processing Through Stages of Sleep………………..…………54

INTRODUCTION:

DISCOVERING IDENTITY IN DARIO ARGENTO’S SURREAL FILMS

“Keep telling yourself it’s all in your mind.”

-Bird with the Crystal Plumage trailer

Trembling, Sara closes and locks the door. Slowly a straight razor blade enters through the crack in the door. Repeatedly and steadily the knife rises and falls, clinking metal blade on metal lock over and over. At any moment, the lock could open, letting the killer inside the room. Frantically, Sara crawls onto a pile of flimsy boxes and through a small window. However, the more she runs the closer she is to being caught. On the other side of the window, she drops down-- into a room full of razor wire. This room is a weapon. The more Sara struggles to escape the tighter the wire grips. Impossibly, the killer is now ahead of her, reaches into the room, and cuts her throat.

When I watch a scene like this one from a Dario Argento film, I feel as if I am in a nightmare. Argento forges a deep emotional connection with his audience, while deftly blending psychology and dream into his own surreal reality. When others read my writing, I want them to feel an initial reaction to the imagery but also to look deeper into the psychological elements present. I want them to feel and think the way I do when watching an Argento film. These movies do not rely on logic or narrative, but they do rely on emotion and intense visceral reaction. The films mimic lyric poetry, shaping the most grotesque ideas into beautiful hyper-stylized images. Upon first watching these films, a viewer may only concentrate on his or her own visceral reaction to the unfolding mystery; however, a closer examination reveals that these films are about deep 8 psychological concerns and questions of identity. Argento’s films captivate me because he creates a dream setting to struggle with aspects of psychology--identity, disrupted family dynamics, and the relationship between victim and victimizer.

Argento’s movies have basic similarities in story structure. At the heart of each movie is a mystery, the identity of a killer, which the main character searches to discover.

In Deep Red Marc Daly, like Sara and other main characters, tries to work out the mystery with a key buried in his subconscious. The main characters always have a clue that they think about endlessly: in Suspiria the phrase “secret irises,” in Deep Red a composition of faces, in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage a painting, and so on. Most of the characters search for the killer’s identity while fleeing from the killer through elaborately lush set designs, often washed with bright red and blue lighting. In contrast with the bright primary colored setting, the faceless killer hides in shadow, is a silhouette, or can only be partially seen, usually showing hands or eyes without a face. The threat of this faceless killer mimics a dream in which someone is chasing the dreamer but no one is seen.

The faceless killer is a reference to Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow. In response to a question in which his interviewer calls the psychology in Suspiria “weird,”

Argento says, “It’s just not Freudian, that’s all. It’s Jungian…When the psychiatrist in

Suspiria says that bad luck doesn’t come from broken mirrors, but from broken minds, I was thinking of Jung” (McDonaugh 241). Many other references to Jung’s ideas appear in various films. Sara’s pursuit in Suspiria is one of Argento’s most intense moments on 9 film. As Sara backs away, the viewer can see a black outlined human form in the shadows. Sara forebodingly backs directly in front of the form, as if it is her shadow.

There are many other instances in Argento’s films in which the killer is the character’s Jungian shadow. In Tenebrae, the police chief bends down to reveal the killer standing directly behind him. He stands back up again perfectly covering the killer’s face with his own. In Deep Red, the killer, who is just behind her but unseen, pushes Helga

Ullman into a window. According to Jungian psychology:

When dark figures show up in our dreams and seem to want something, we

cannot be sure whether they personify merely a shadowy part of ourselves, or the

Self, or both at the same time. Divining in advance whether our dark partner

symbolizes a shortcoming that we should overcome or a meaningful bit of life

that we should accept--this is one of the most difficult problems that we encounter

on the way to individuation. (Jung et. al. 184)

The superimposition of characters upon each other interests me in my own work. In dreams the shadow character chasing the dreamer is not literally a character. They are projections or shadows simply embodying the anxiety or the problems of the dreamer. In several of my poems the speaker runs from an entity, but ultimately I want the entity to be the source of the speaker’s restless state of mind.

Because the killers who lurk in the shadows are deeply connected with Argento’s settings, the violence connects with the surroundings, one example being at the beginning of the film Suspiria, perhaps Argento’s most surreal film. A girl named Pat stares through a window, out into the black night. She has been fleeing from someone or something. Pat 10 thinks she has escaped but feels paranoid, believing that she sees something right outside her window. Yet the lighting in the room allows her to focus only on her own reflection in the window. She places her face closer. She holds a lamp to the glass, but still she can only see herself. Then suddenly glowing yellow eyes flash open in the dark reflection. A hand breaks through the window barrier and pulls Pat’s head closer, smashing her screaming mouth against the glass. The character’s interaction with the window is one example of a character examining the setting closely and trying to see what they cannot, as well as an example of how a killer uses the setting to hurt a victim.

Spaces are gendered in these films. Outside spaces are masculine and expansive, usually filled with large architecture and male sculptures. In these spaces, the victim is completely exposed but usually not attacked. Inner spaces appear to be safe, but the majority of victims are killed inside. The masculine figure dominates both outer and inner spaces, eliminating the people inside. I also deal with gendered space in my poems. In several poems a male figure is outside and threatens to intrude upon the woman or child in the inner spaces. By gendering the spaces, I hope to set up a tense and anxiety-filled situation, which allows the voice to be matter of fact without being anxious, like an objective camera lens.

Exaggerated details in the setting are important in visually cueing the viewer in on the dream. The color of blood is not blood red but a primary paint color red. The color draws attention to the fact that this is not a realistic scene. The extreme brutality of the killings and the excessive chase scenes make the audience feel extreme anxiety and fear, while recognizing that the images are not realistic because of the color and the extreme 11 amount of blood. The audience watches a nightmare in progress. In the aforementioned example from Suspiria, Pat again flees from the killer. However, the killer has a giant butcher knife. She tries to escape but the killer stabs her. With each stab the girl twists and spins, as if dancing to the throbbing music of the score. She falls onto a stained glass window in the ceiling of the building, which is composed of bright orange and yellow triangles of glass. A close-up shot shows that her heart is exposed and still rapidly beats.

The knife stabs directly into her heart. Yet, the killer isn’t finished. He ties a rope to Pat’s body, and, when she falls through the panes of colored glass, she is left hanging. The bright red blood drips down her feet in streams and lands on the black and white tiles below. As the body swings, the blood dripping on the floor makes a Jackson Pollack-like painting.

Argento builds a psychic space for his characters to move through. The architecture itself becomes as important as any character. The large, luxuriant buildings are representations of the main character’s mind. The films are usually set in large mansions or schools, with high ceilings, velvet curtains, elaborate paintings, winding staircases, rows of doors, and broken glass and mirrors. Aspects of the setting usually obscure what the character sees-- for example shadows, doors, or curtains-- or distort what the character sees -- like the mirrors, windows, and paintings. One setting in Deep

Red is a dilapidated mansion. The main character, Marc, moves through the space trying to uncover the identity of the killer. It is as though the character is searching his mind to find the answer. He searches through rooms, checks the basement, and finally uncovers a child’s mural that has been plastered over. Later, he discovers that under this picture is a 12 hidden room with a dead body walled off inside. This dead body symbolizes childhood trauma and the root of madness for the character. He slowly uncovers the story behind that trauma through interactions with other characters. In all of these movies, the dreamer knows little and must interact with other characters, representing parts of himself or herself to find out more.

The most apparent fragmenting of the self is in Deep Red. Marc follows the role of the hero. According to Jungian psychology the path of the hero is important in dreams because the hero establishes his identity as an individual. If the hero lacks certain characteristics, then other characters with those characteristics will help them on their journey (Jung 101). Marc fits this role and the characters around him, Gianna and Carlo, fit the roles of those who help and guide the hero.

Gianna, a reporter, is one character who helps Marc in his search for the murderer. Whenever she is onscreen Marc appears more feminine and describes himself as a sensitive artist. Gianna, however, is a strong, loud woman who makes sexual advances toward Marc. When the characters are together their sex roles and gender identities seem to blend. They complement each other. First, with Gianna Marc seems comfortable enough to bicker with her about gender differences and his sensitivity as an artist, which does come across as quite feminine. He says women are weaker and gentler.

Gianna proves that they are not weaker and gentler by laughing and arm-wrestling him.

The interactions between the two are comical and romantic.

In different versions of the hero myth, secondary characters represent different aspects that the hero must develop (Jung et. al. 106). Thus, Marc needs to take on more of 13 the characteristics that Gianna embodies. Marc represents the introverted, reflective artist, while Gianna represents the outgoing, action-oriented person looking for facts. Gianna strengthens Marc, especially at the end of the movie when she saves Marc from a burning building. In a scene near the end of the movie, the two walk side by side in unison down a corridor. They are both facing away from the camera. They have the same length and color hair, the same color clothing, and they both look at each other at exactly the same moment several times. The two know that they are just about to reveal the murderer with each other’s help. However, just after this scene, the murderer stabs Gianna, leaving

Marc on his own to face the killer, or his shadow.

Marc’s best friend, Carlo, is another double and guide for Marc. Carlo reluctantly helps Marc. He tells Marc, “Look, maybe you have seen something so important you just can’t realize it.” Carlo’s character fits the profile of the Trickster hero cycle. The trickster has physical appetites yet represents the child (Jung et. al. 105). Near the end of the film

Carlo’s past is revealed. As a child he witnessed his mother murder his father. The murder of the father seems to have split the same character into two halves. One half,

Marc, sides with the father, knows nothing of the murder, functions as an individual who lives alone, and is heterosexual. The second, Carlo, remembers the murder, tries to protect and still lives with his mother, barely functions because of his alcoholism, and is secretly homosexual. The film doesn’t assert that homosexuality is wrong. The sexual differences make the distinction between the two characters clearer. This separation of characters by their psychological aspects shows a larger struggle with the ideas about how a person deals with trauma. 14

Trauma relates closely with creativity in the hero’s journey. Both Marc and Carlo are pianists, and so is Martha, Carlo’s mother. When Marc is asked why he is a pianist, he makes a joke comparing bashing the keys to bashing his father’s teeth in. However, this reaction to parental figures is not just a joke. Carlo told Marc that when he plays the keys of the piano it is like tickling the fanny of a beautiful woman. Of course, this statement doesn’t ring true after the audience finds out that Carlo is homosexual. Martha tells Marc that she plays the piano to comfort herself because Carlo’s father stifled her career as an actress. Music is a metaphor for expression. The act of pounding the keys is like stabbing, just as the act of tickling the keys is like sexual expression. According to

Jung, facing the shadow liberates the individual from parental expectations, thus liberating creativity (Jung et. al. 118). Marc and Carlo try to express their trauma through music, but Marc is the more successful pianist. He is the character most able to break free from the trauma and from the mother figure.

Soon after Gianna’s stabbing, Carlo’s character dies, leaving Marc completely alone on his journey. Before his death, Carlo tries to convince Marc that he is the murderer, to protect his mother who is a paranoid schizophrenic, while he holds Marc at gunpoint. Carlo, however, fails to kill Marc and to take on his mother’s role. In the most dreamlike sequence in the movie, a garbage truck hits Carlo and drags him for an extended period of time. Carlo lies bleeding on the road. As if he has not been through enough, Carlo’s head is then run over by a speeding car. The child, or trickster, dies.

Marc is left to battle his shadow alone. The killer, Carlo’s mother Martha, reveals that she is schizophrenic and tries to kill Marc. To stay alive, he must take on her role and 15 kill her. Unlike Carlo, Marc is a successful killer. Marc beheads Martha, which leaves a pool of bright red blood on the floor. A shot of Marc’s face reflected in the pool of blood shows his emotions as he realizes what he has done. His actual face is not in the shot, just his reflection. The reflection almost appears to be the audience member’s reflection, as the viewer stares in horror at the last shot. Argento implies that everyone must face their shadow and conquer it.

Argento suggests that all humans have the potential to be the hero, as well as the shadow. In Argento’s films the killers are first only seen through their hands and eyes; this fragmentation of body parts obscures the person’s identity and also allows his or her gender to remain ambiguous. Argento films his own hands, usually wearing gloves, as the killer’s hands in nearly all of his movies. Technically, then, the killer has male hands.

The killer appears male and usually characters refer to the fedora hat, gloves, and trench coat wearing killers as “he,” but this masculine pronoun is deceptive. Most of the time, the audience discovers that a woman is the murderer. The killer in Deep Red is an insane woman. In Suspiria, the evil force is a fairytale stepmother-like witch. Phenomena is about a single mother with a monster child. Most of the films are about women who enact violence on their husbands and children or who react violently to their parents, or both. A majority of these films deal with family dynamics gone shockingly wrong.

Another movie, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, deals with the transformation of a person from victim to victimizer, while exploring how someone could identify with the role of the attacker. The killer is a woman named Monica who was attacked by a knife-wielding madman. A painter portrayed the attack in a painting, which Monica buys. 16

She does not identify with herself, the victim, in the painting. The more she stares, the more she identifies with the mysterious attacker wearing a fedora and a trench coat. She begins to dress like the killer. With this in mind, it is hard not to look at the women in the other films and their fedoras without thinking that they have been victimized, possibly by a man, and turned into the killers we see in the revealing moments.

It may seem strange that I am influenced by the one filmmaker who chooses to write a majority of his killers as women and mothers, since I am both. However, I believe

Argento is writing parental and child relationships in the way that I am. Most of my poems are about a violent male father and a weak or victimized mother. In Argento’s films these roles are reversed. The father is usually the weak figure that is dead or absent and the mother is in the terrifying and violent role. Both men and women play Argento’s

“child” characters. Gender neutrality is a way of insisting that the characters do not have clearly defined sex roles yet, like undeveloped children. Argento achieves a fair balance between male and female protagonists, secondary characters, and victims. He does have a few more female murderers than male murderers, perhaps to subvert audience expectations, but also to show the character’s development into an adult, separate from the mother. I am trying to break away from the parental figures in my own writing. I am trying to understand them and move past them.

Some critics accuse Argento of misogyny, which he addresses. In Tenebrae, a reporter asks the character Peter, who doubles for Argento, why he is misogynistic. Peter disputes hating women, but the reporter again asks why there are so many female victims in his books. Peter never fully answers, leaving the question for the audience to consider. 17

Yes, murderers who target women are misogynistic. If a male writer, like Argento, wants to portray a misogynistic character does that make him misogynistic? No. It is clearly wrong to kill anyone in these movies. When Peter is interviewed again, he is told that his book is about aberrant behavior because some of his victims are gay. Peter protests saying that the gay couple is happy. The characters aren’t punished for their behavior.

Just because a character is gay or a woman does not mean they are killed because of their sexual preferences or gender. I portray situations between genders and draw attention to the emotions and psychological repercussions of those situations. Women are threatened in my poems, but I do not hate women. In my writing there are male characters, and I have to try to understand them or think about how they would move or what they would do. I have to place myself in a violent role and the role of the victim, so does Argento.

As well, Argento grapples with the idea that a victim can becomes a victimizer, or that both are one entity. In Inferno a woman, Rose, walks down a dark hallway searching for her friend Carlo. (Yes, another Carlo who happens to be played by the same actor in

Deep Red.) Carlo leaves Rose to investigate a sudden power failure. To the girl’s surprise

Carlo leaps out at her from the shadows, grabs her, and knocks her down. She scrambles to get away and tries to push Carlo’s body away from hers. He touches her legs sexually.

The audience sees that Carlo is not a killer or a rapist. He has a long knife penetrating his neck, causing him to cough blood as he reaches to his friend silently asking for help.

Rose pushes him away. Carlo bleeds on her and the blood transfers onto her clothing, placing the role of the victim onto her too. This ambiguity between victim and victimizer makes Carlo both and creates a chain of victims. 18

I also want to explore identity by using a dream world setting. I try to understand people in these family structures and the victim and victimizer roles. I am exploring myself in relation to my past and situating myself within it, in order to deal with the nightmare image of my father. He is more than ever the image of nightmare, especially now that he is physically absent. He stands for an abstract idea of something wrong, the victimizer. Most of my poems are about him but they are more about me trying to grapple with the idea of him. What transformed him from person to nightmare? This is the puzzle that I must solve. Is writing about my father, who is no longer a threat to me, a way for me to recreate contact with him or to relive my experiences with him? No. Although one part of me wants to forget childhood and everything related to it, another part wants to understand what happened. Just like the protagonists of an Argento film, I want to revisit these past events to understand them. Marc says he has a morbid fascination, but I think that he and I are looking for the key to understanding who we are.

Some people dismiss Argento’s movies as violent with nothing to offer. They are wrong. Argento uses the mystery and surreal atmosphere to discuss deeper issues of self and psychology. The audience should expect to see embellished violence. Those audience members who are prepared to experience the feeling of being in a dream will not be disappointed. As both a writer and a filmmaker, Argento succeeds because the audience members are invested in the visual and emotional buildup of each film and realize that he is presenting roles and aspects of consciousness not addressed in everyday life. I hope that my poems do the same. In these movies, the protagonist must overcome the family roles, face the shadow, and briefly acknowledge that they do have problems, in order to 19 kill the negativity that continues to haunt them. The overall point in all of these movies is that you look your horrors in the face, understand them, and destroy them. If you can destroy them, then they do not overtake you. When I write about my nightmare figure again and again, it is not so I can relive negative moments. These poems are my attempt to look my nightmare figure in the eye and make him disappear.

Works Cited

Jung, Carl G., M.-L. von Franz, Joseph L. Henderson, Jolande Jacobi, and Aniela Jaffe.

Man and his Symbols. United States: Dell, 1964. Print.

McDonaugh, Maitland. Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds The Dark Dreams of Dario

Argento. Expanded ed. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Pr., 2010. Print.

REAL NIGHTMARES

If dreams are movies, then memories are films about ghosts.

–“Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby,” Counting Crows

I. The Child

“There’s a child singing in that house. Death. Blood.”

--Helga Ullman (Deep Red)

“It’s like having a madman in the house.”

--Elvira (Deep Red)

You have made me Mnemosyne

I am the gaping hole left from your piercing shard. I am the thoughts, pushed down and hard. I am the person whose name you cannot place, the lost word that your tongue cannot trace.

I linger, become faint after the end, while you and your name still stand. You, scourge of the sky, You, maker of the clouds, You, shaker of thunder,

You, coward, cannot point your scepter my way or nod your head to say I’m the father. I remember.

Your looming presence no longer threatens yet, the unspoken knot tightens. The sorrow, the sobs are pressed into me and from them spring all creativity.

Frankenstein’s Zombie

My children rise up too often these days. Day becomes soft, the night a place to run from blindly.

You say your hideous face is frightening? Well then so am I for creating you, progeny.

No knife or bullet stops what is made and impossible for me to kill.

Your first words are red with new blood. You gnaw the man’s skin, the brain.

Soar

My sister had soft hair, so cute, so brown. It would shine and wave as she pumped her legs. Higher and higher, it seemed as if she’d fly. Her pink dress sparkled in the sun as she would hum. I would frown and wonder why she still flew so high, when he would always beat her down so far.

White Shadows

My mother became one with the hollow house where the crimson skin carpets were burnt white in square patches, that steamed in the sun, after years of its torture.

The heart of the house, the furnace, pumped air up and out the brown metal vents that became burning hot.

Like a blister filling with serum, each room filled with warm air. My mother thought the air too cold.

She would step onto the metal grid with bare skin that grew hotter and redder. She would dance from foot to foot not leaving the pain because of the pleasure. Yet, the dancing forced the feet down over and over, making it harder and harder to stand.

She left the house and years have passed but as winter approaches, the coldness creeps and she has the urge to dance with the heat. She lowers a cigarette to her skin, holding it there, creating the burning brown vent, the dark red crusted carpet, the white shadows of self-hate, restructuring the painful memories, building them back in, not allowing them to fade away, but wearing them on her skin.

Voyeur

I remember the subject was family, in-laws, children, me. I can’t remember the exact words and their faces are missing. I remember the voices ricocheting in the hallway, up the stairs, into the other rooms.

I remember the repeating, repeating I can’t remember-- In a doorframe, off at a distance she stands with her face close to his. Just do it, do it, just hit me. I remember he did.

I Don’t Want to Play

It's strange, when my father lived in the house I was less afraid than when he was locked out of our lives, trying to break back in.

At least as a child I wasn't afraid to sit by a window for fear of him looking in.

Even though, when we were younger, he would sneak outside in the dark, creep to the window, and lightly tap the pane to get our attention.

We couldn't see him, just a blackened mirror with our own puzzled reflection staring back.

We sat like frightened characters who can't quite see their killer waiting nearby.

We sat wondering with growing paranoia as we heard another tap and another.

Then he would hit his fists against the window make us jump, but then relax.

It was just him.

Riding Upside-down

I remember Heather. We would scream and scream. Once a boy riding behind us, we couldn’t see him, told us to shut up. We both stopped abruptly and told him that we would not, then went back to screaming.

I remember riding the red monkey cages with my father. He would stomp his foot on the silver metal floor, lean forward over the bar, and roll the cage as fast as he could. I was terrified but I wouldn’t scream.

II. The Child Changes Roles

“In everyday life this person could appear quite normal,

as normal as you or I or anyone else.”

--Professor Giordani (Deep Red)

I was born a Gemini Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde white banality colorful creativity changing back and forth from time to time I was born Gemini with greying eyes weapons of a false Athena they now shift from hi, hi, hi brown eye to good morning peacocks a hazelnut Hera mix I was born Gemini Goldilocks crawling into bed with curiosity but that led to brown, brown bears scaring me naive I was bored, so I changed to black-- to swallow the shaking squeaking thoughts that seep to still the mouse nibbling on finger I was bored, so I changed to black-- to become the quiet corner searcher the shadow lurker the shrieking talon tearing night stalker I was bored, so I changed to black-- to cover the truth that I am just normal 32 no monster goddess no fairy tale animal anomaly

I am

Mangosteen

I started green, shy in the shadows, slowly I darkened and grew hard to protect myself, but now I flaunt my fruit to make you hungry, to make you dream of biting flesh, of tearing meat, skin basking in heat.

I expand at will. A slow red streak softens me, draws you near. I grow and grow until I’m purple, until you pick me at my peak.

You cut me open, pull apart the halves of my ruby shell, just like Vasco Da Gama, wetting your lips with juice few have tasted.

You dig within my white ridges draining me. When you are done my seeds fall to the ground dry.

I should know by now you always leave. Still, next year, you will feed.

We Know Basements and Attics

When you come to my attic, everyone knows exactly what we are doing though I am still not sure. We sneak out in the morning.

When I come to your basement, I anxiously lie listening to the radio cycle songs all night long. I should go but I wait to hear your voice. You open your blue eyes and smile.

When I come to your basement you fall asleep mid-kiss, so I walk home losing some clothes along the way, only finding them in the morning when I wander back.

Crumpled and dusty they are pitiful in the sun. They lead from being alone to being alone with someone.

You are not passionate about me. I walk back home--

When you appear in my attic early in the morning, I know you have been in her house all night.

Your knuckles are scabbing from punching walls. She is not passionate about you--

We know basements and attics, could tell every knot in the ugly paneling, every crack in the cement floor.

Even in my attic, I know what it is like to hear pipes drip, to see mold grow, to feel a stone wall press against me.

Even in your basement, you know the dim lights and sloped ceiling, the suffocation of thick air and being too close.

We think we know each other, but all we know is where the other dwells. We both want each other.

Both turn away. The heat leaks from us.

Moon Madness

I’ve tried to make my winter wolf love me. I’ve found him night after night at the same time loping and skulking down by the waters. He does not want my willing company. He would rather hunt me down but I cannot wait to feel his fur and heat. I sit too close and hope he will place a giant paw upon my arm, crunch my tiny bones in his hungry teeth. His teeth sink in but not to bone, he does not feast long enough. He only loved me enough to scar me to transform me. Night after night I lope and skulk by the waters but he does not seek my company.

Synaptic Gap

I don’t like when two things touch. If an object connects with another object, in my mind they are connected forever. When a toothbrush touches the floor when a past boyfriend’s eyes touch my clothes, I want to get rid of them so I won’t be reminded of the touching.

Mind the Gap

I fell so hard that I folded my life into separate halves like Mark Renton in Scotland who thought his life was shite and shot up, kicked his way to an underwater bottom, fell over cracking his head, until he fell too far, fell straight through the floor, slipped into a red carpet cloud. Where once there was a sharp hit, now his feet fell softly. He had to be dragged from his drug induced coma into consciousness. Gasping.

I came up gasping and cried for days. I ran, tried to run straight to escape my past but like Mark I was followed, forced to live a life I did not choose anymore.

I fell because there was nowhere else to go. I fell to see how low I could go. I fell because I deserved it like Alexander De Large who put others into place by pushing them down with a song, swift flip kick boots and a cane with concealed weapon.

But he fell, also screaming, blinded by milk and shattered glass. His black boots flailed, kicked nothing but air. Afterwards he was bloody and bandaged.

I was trained to be nauseous at the thought of a word at the sound of a familiar song. I was behaviorally trained to be good like Alex, who was pushed to an I’m going to be sick gag, make it stop stomp and jump-- but I’ve cured myself from my past guilt. I can still see my first twenty years spiraling I can see that for a moment my feet flew from the ground my face crashed into the pavement. I arose, gasping but alive.

Now it’s nice and sparkling clear to me that I, like the two of them, am leaving guilty of past sin but walking away grinning.

On the Table

The woman doesn’t want me to feel the pain as they burn through layers of my skin. I can’t see the needle, it stings hot. I can hear it slide between my vertebrae and paralyze me.

Although I am lying down, I feel as though I am sitting. I can only feel what has happened, not what is happening. The feeling of my body is only in my mind. I try to lift my head but gag. What is inside me will not come through my mouth.

The small Japanese man screams short and quick bursts at the women but I can’t see his mouth. Then the boy is out and purple. They bring him toward me but I gag. He is taken away. I am drugged, and drugged, and clamped shut.

I wake in a dark room. I am cold, alone, and shaking even though the morphine is supposed to stop the feeling with hot slow waves pulsing through my veins.

III. The Mother

“There’s somebody in the house absolutely trying to kill me, you know?”

--Marc Daly (Deep Red)

Latches Do Not Lock and Hinges Do Not Hold

My Mommy doll has lost her buttons. She sits slumped in her little chair. We both know that he creeps outside her dollhouse windows. We’ve locked the doors but he will break them down. We’ve told him that we don’t want to play but he does not listen. He wants to knock her to the floor dreams of pulling the thread from her seams.

The Town Police Insist I am Paranoid All Summer

My first stalker has a scar from corner of cheek to ear, stands too close, speaks too loudly, talks about the crimes he has committed, waits outside my classroom. The police say he just wants a friend.

My second stalker brings a present to my door. It’s a book that I cannot accept. He rips out the pages and throws it at me. I am ungrateful.

My second stalker stands outside my apartment smoking, stares as my boyfriend comes and goes. When I sit in my car and cry, he drives by and laughs. One day he pushes me and threatens to call the police.

My third stalker cuts my brake lines. Her ponytail bobs as she runs away. I've never met her but she must know me. Outside the courtroom she kisses my stepfather.

My fourth stalker plants nails welded into stars along the driveway. Together stalkers three and four drive by in a white van as I show the policeman who doesn’t say or do anything.

My fourth stalker convinces my brother to sell his guns. He unscrews the lock on our door so it won’t close. The police say Him? You’re crazy. He’s your father.

Slice of Life

In my dream there is a killer with rough hands. I realize they are the hands of my father as he is slicing green apples with a hint of red tinge. My baby has a bodily reaction to the fear. I see the puke-stained shirt and I know that he is coming for us with razor blades. I run to my mother who holds giant sewing scissors. I scream He's going to kill us! and she says So? and stabs down into his chest with one point of the opened scissors, barely breaking the skin. He is standing still, waiting to die, but she won't kill him unless I convince her to move.

Spiraling

Thoughts and antithoughts circle in the empty mind in the vastly full mind the world rotates like a hyperactive boy pushed by unseen energy the day spins on each moment creating momentum

I watch and feel his rotations with darting eyes and stomach his gravity drags me from my circle I can only see the searing white lines pulled the fixed stars around me

I’m afraid this spinning in time will never let me think or see my thoughts are too blurry

I would like to grab the earth by his shoulders, stare into those ocean eyes and say please stop.

Sacrificial Stare

My son stands in pale skin, naked atop the toilet. From nowhere, hidden in black between limb and rib, he pulls with slow silence, the knife. Each tooth shine, shine, shines with steel and then blood. His faraway eyes stare at the tip.

A tribal drum rhythm begins and my eyes dart down. His feet are submerged in the porcelain, tendons are cut, running. I grab him, leave the dark, the knife, but, as we run up the winding staircase, I wake to the pounding drum of my heart in my ears

I know I must really save him.

Internal Instincts

Since my son’s eighth birthday, four kittens have been clawing the soft red flesh inside my stomach. Their nagging is annoying. They want to come out and live with us, just what my son wants too. He says he is lonely. He has a cat, but not a kitten, not four kittens. I have a son, but not a baby, not more children. I don’t need another child, and he doesn’t need a kitten, but the animals inside me are clawing. They want to come out.

A One-Sided Conversation

He threw up blood on the carpet, and I bleached it. He didn’t want me to, but I said when I taught school and a kid threw up, I would always have to bleach it. You have to kill the germs, you just can’t leave it. I think he was embarrassed that he didn’t make it to the bathroom. Truthfully, he should have had a bucket or wastebasket, But I bleached the germs out. The carpet turned white, but I just throw a rug over it. I bought a steam cleaner and I just wear his slippers so my feet won’t get hot. You wouldn’t believe how hot that carpet gets. Can you believe it has been two years? I can’t. I can’t. I just keep thinking he went on a trip without me. Those nightmares are back. I dream that he and I are together and fishing. I catch something and reel it in and it’s a baby’s head caught by the hair. Can you believe that? A baby’s head! What is that supposed to mean? I wake up and it’s like I’m not in reality. I just sit on my bed or go out to the garden. I rake around his flowers. I bought a small rake that is sturdy and I just get in there and rake. I cut all the flowers back and stained the deck a few shades darker. It’s an almond color that he picked out. The outside is just as neat as the inside now. If you want, you can borrow the steam cleaner. I’m sure you have some stains of your own.

Dreams Born

The dream womb feels comfortable on the surface as if the cocooned body is resting in calm silence as if nothing is forming at all, but inside I stand up and see the clouds circling in the night I strain to look up through the dark debris when a memory hits me.

This new knowing is jarring knocks me facedown in the dewy grass lands glowing hot in the parted green beside the boots of the left handed killer. He holds the knife, wants my stretched limbs to move. He tilts his head and his deep brown eyes wait.

I grab the memory and run, and just as I feel the warm blood flowing the god machine grabs my collar, pulls me up and out clutching my little idea. Upon waking, I have birthed the shining thought but have also clung to another malformed, incestuous image fathered by the man of my dreams.

IV. Reflections

“What I saw was a reflection in a mirror.

I saw the face of the murderer.”

--Marc Daly (Deep Red)

Looking-Glass Girl

I look into the screen. On the surface is a projection. The reflection of myself is there in a face that is not mine.

My lips do not move, I listen to the words spoken. They tell my story the way I did not tell it.

I look into the glass as it melts and enter in, become Alice dancing in scenes across the screen.

I feel my red lips kiss a little red book. My hands paint petaled roses red, make the heart want a head.

I see my rabbit. I run from my queen, only pausing to grow in the neat hedgerow.

I see growing white tights, apron, black shoes and bow, against the black and white Escher-chess floor.

I step into myself, the space between the real and unreal, where I feel my life lived without living it.

Reality Checks to Gain Lucidity

Go far beyond a pinch me Check to make sure that you are wearing all of your fingers Maybe make one pass through your palm or your cheek Hold an index finger under your nose to see if you are breathing Or maybe touch the tip to see if it is attached Look around Do you see any signs? Check the time Is there time? Flip the lights once or twice Look into a mirror But watch for scary distortions of what you should see Press your present digits against the glass and ask Is that really me? Are these things real? Check your hands again They look like strong hands. Look down at your feet. Look down at the ground And let me know if you are dreaming.

Directed Dreams

I. The Set: The Mind Within the Body

The architect says he has become one with the house, the building his body the bricks his cells the passageways his veins the heart his horror.

If this building is the body, then the body is haunted by the mind that crawls through its passages that tears at the plaster lurks in the basement seeks out answers that it should not know.

II. The Villain: Death

In Argento’s gialli the killers wear black gloves hold a silver straight razor that shines in the light that cuts and sprays thick streams of blood.

In his supernatural movies, the hands are sometimes black-nailed, hairy and old, skinny and white. They are the hands of a witch that smashes faces against glass, stabs into the pink bare heart.

Before the hands though come the yellow eyes on a pitch black face, as if there is no face. Death’s eyes flash open, hands emerge.

III. The Audience: Witness to Madness

I sit in awe, seeing stylized death. Each frame is a colored composition dominated by a palette of splattered red, showing that the killer and the killed are one self.

When the unconscious death drive is unleashed in the architecture of the mind, I want to follow. I want to seek out the darkest corner, know why the demon’s eyes glow in shadow.

I want to see how a mind can shatter like a victim falling on glass.

IV. The Motive: Unsane Violence

In Tenebrae the madman reads the words and identifies with them as if he had written them. Madness repressed comes through on the page inspiring more madness opening the repressed wound.

He shoves the words into her mouth. She feels paper on the tongue sharp as the razor in her neck.

V. The Hero: Broken Pieces of Personality

In Deep Red Marc Daly in Italy was split into many. He was the sensitive artist, the sexually assertive woman, the homosexual sell out, the psychic, the psychologist, the writer of supernatural stories.

He was an innocent victim, terrorized by a faceless killer, 53 at least on the conscious surface, but he knew something.

The truth was entombed in his memory. When he found the hidden picture, the clue to the mind's insanity, he was struck down by leather gloved hands left with red flames flicking across his face. The killer inside frightened him only until he stood up and strangled it to death.

Memory Processing in the Stages of Sleep

N1 Drowsy Sleep with Twitches

Some horror movies freeze images in your head, can cause ongoing nightmares. I grew up wanting to scream in them.

N2 Awareness of External Environment Disappears

I lived in my own horror movie, with my own villain. I never had bad dreams, except for the one about severed hands trying to feed me.

N3 Night Terrors, Sleepwalking, Sleeptalking

Now, I have nightmares. My stepfather is usually my potential killer, not Terry O’Quinn, who screamed threats into the dark, thinking his stepdaughter didn’t hear or see.

Rapid Eye Movement

Sometimes, threatening things go unseen. I can feel them, hiding bodies, chasing me, faceless and following. I have turned and faced my killers. I stabbed one in the heart.

Preservation

The blades that they carry never touch me. The chase never ends with my capture. I’ve never been killed, not even by the apocalypse or the zombies. I’m the untouched last survivor in and out of dreams.

Wound Healing

So now, when I walk down the street, I like to hear my own deep bass soundtrack coincide with my steps in the dark. If a set of headlights suddenly shone on my silhouette, racing toward me, I would know what to do.