1.

I rise before my alarm goes off. Moving like a man oblivious to time, I unfold gray clothes and dress myself. Outside of the cell window, dark grass claws its way free of the soil, newly fed by summer rains. I piss. I pour a cup of water. The pungence of instant coffee soon fills the space. I sit in darkness, thinking assailable thoughts.

2. A jingle of some guard's heavy brass keys wakes me with a start. The clock at the end of my bunk reads 3:18 AM – still more than two hours before I usually wake up. I lie prone, eyes closed, listening to the whoosh of air from the ducts. Several cells down the row, a toilet flushes. From far away, sleep taunts me with a call of "Catch me if you can!" 3. In the grand scheme of things, this day won't matter. These breaths I'm taking now are nothing, from the unfathomable perspective of the universe's infinite void. Why bother at all with this alarm, this pathetic little device created to instill in the humans who use it a vain sense of purpose as we stumble about our minuscule lives? Why get out of bed? Why dress and shave and all the rest if this, in the cosmic sense, will all be over soon anyway? My stripped-clean bones' ultimate disintegration, these concrete walls' crumbling to dust, and the heat death of the universe itself are all inevitabilities – so why expend the energy to get up? Yet somehow, I muster enough fortitude to open one eye.... 4. There was a song. Now I don't remember how it went. We were singing it together, the cast of The Simpsons and myself. I don't mean the voice actors who perform as characters for the show, but the characters themselves. We were in a Matt Groening version of Denny's, performing terrible, croony songs for the elderly midday diners. I wake up wondering whether it's stranger that my mind could envision me singing alongside cartoon characters or that I might dream about a TV series I haven't watched in more than twenty-four years. 5. Morning. The bed is the perfect temperature – not so warm that I risk sweating, not so cool that I'll bother dragging my blanket up from the foot. I also, somehow, have found a comfortable position. The sheets are clean and still fluffy from yesterday's washing. I could stay right here, just like this, until noon – except there's work to be done. 6.

I bolt upright and slap my alarm clock. I lie back down and stretch my arms, my neck, my legs, my spine. A thought crosses my mind: Exactly when did I become someone who doesn't care to sleep in?. Climbing down from the bunk, I slip. In the awkward process of righting myself, I twist my wrist to a point just this side of painful. For a moment, the temptation is to pre-emptively resign myself to a cavalcade of minor failures today. A moment later, I reconsider, regroup, and find my center. I embark.

Prison Dreams

Rodney's been down, as we say, for over forty years. He says that he doesn't dream anymore, but I'm not sure if I believe him. Years on death row, plus two more in solitary confinement seem to me as though they'd inspire the wildest flights of fancy. Then again, I know how creatively stultifying my own surroundings sometimes feel, day in, day out, and what a tonic pictures of elsewhere (whether physical or mentally conjured) can be.

A couple of days ago, my friend Paul said, "I think I've transitioned to dreaming exclusively about prison." I doubt this, too. I don't think that Paul, scarcely locked up for a year and a half, is in a position to know what influence his fresh memories of freedom might yet exert on his dreams.

Even after twenty years, my dreams aren't usually restricted to this world of walls and chain link and razor wire. The people in them are only sometimes inmates. I once wrote a blog about my weird dreams that still paints a pretty accurate picture of my nightly subconscious adventures.

Last night's dream was decidedly a prison dream.

The prison in it wasn't a real prison. It looked instead like an amalgam of the three very different facilities where I've been confined. While I walked around it, doing whatever daily tasks the dream-me did, a large group of angry prisoners took up occupation in a particular zone and refused to move. They shouted obscenities at passersby – myself included – and put on their most menacing faces; however, their purpose wasn't clear.

What was clear was that they were doing a good job of intimidating everyone. Members of the prison staff spoke about getting home to their families before violence broke out, while they packed up office supplies like Ukrainian refugees before a bombing attack. I just drifted from point to point, watching wordlessly, a spectator, but with the sense that I wasn't quite there, as though I occupied another plane of existence, which only intersected with this one.

That was it – just a series of observations. No riot ever took place, nor did I never get away from the fearful chaos. I simply stood by, watching and waiting for the seemingly inevitable. Because of that, it felt a little bit like real life.

Maybe it was the execution that the state carried out yesterday, here at ERDCC. Protesters massed in front of the facility, behind sawhorses and faced with armed guards – an unsettling scene from TV, remixed by my brain at some point in the night.

Or it could've been yesterday's breakfast-table topic about State Representative Kimberly Ann Collins, the legislator championing Missouri House Bill 1922 to form an independent committee overseeing the Department of Corrections. That conversation had me thinking for much of the day about things I've seen since being transferred to ERDCC, the ways that this facility operates, and the ways in which it's broken.

Sometimes I do wish that, like my coworker Rodney, I didn't dream. The lasting effect of dreams often feels like a daytime haunting. Even the best of my days are freighted enough.

Two Noisy Neighbors Plus Three Phantom Flushes Equal Zero Sleep

Any rest that a person gets in prison is going to be hard-won. This goes as much for fulfilling sleep as for mental rest. I do okay with the latter, with relaxation and meditation, but getting a decent night's rest seems to have become next to impossible.

Jeff and I got a new neighbor on Monday — a skinny kid of about twenty, with short, short dreadlocks and a friendly smile. His cellmate, however, is our least favorite person in the wing, advertising his selfish attitude in almost everything he does, from dragging his feet at lockdown times, to cutting in front of people in line for meals, to frequently shouting back and forth with our neighbors across the walk, to camping on the phone without a care for who's waiting. His consistently shitty behavior makes us wonder how he ever made it to the honor dorm. Some guys just get lucky.

After about two days of the new kid's acclimation, Jeff and I started hearing shuffles, thumps, laughter, and shrieks through the wall. Great, we thought, our neighbors are roughhousers. Throughout the day, their spirited conversations carry easily from their cell to ours. They stay up late into the night, too. I woke to their excited hooting on three separate occasions during the past eighteen hours alone. The last time, I rolled over on my bunk, seized the handle of my metal footlocker, and, as hard as I could, slammed it three times into the wall. Finally, the children quieted down. The damage was done, though; I lay awake for more than an hour afterward, my body piqued with adrenaline, cortisol, and whatever other stress-related chemicals my system churns out when I'm incensed.

Sometime after 1:30 AM, perhaps, sleep's sweet embrace once again enfolded me. I had a dream about my favorite park, about walking through its rose garden and feeling blissfully at ease, free and completely comfortable. All around me, birds came to land in numbers unheard of — sparrows and pigeons, as well as blue jays, grackles, and cardinals by the score.

What might it mean? I asked my dream self. I extended a hand to pet one of the birds' beaks that seemed to be waiting for my touch. It closed its tiny eyes, and other birds came nearer. A feeling of acceptance and trust by these often-timid creatures overwhelmed me.

Then a gurgling rose from nearby, rapidly growing louder and louder, until it became a muted roar. I awoke and still heard the sound: our toilet flushing. By itself. On the top bunk, Jeff turned on his reading lamp. We both stared at the commode flushing itself. It kept going and going, and for a brief period I wondered if it would stop at all, or if we'd have to try to get the institution's plumbers to our cell before breakfast. After a minute or two it let off a high-pitch squeal, then stopped.

I looked at the clock. 3:18 AM. The toilet fell silent. Then it flushed again, for a normal duration. Then it flushed a third time, and was still.

"Our plumbing is haunted," Jeff said.

I grumbled back, "This whole place is nightmarish."

Neither one of us managed a productive sleep after that. I can only imagine what horrors tonight's going to bring. That's prison for you.

Nocturne

I dreamed that I was back in the city. I saw friends long gone and missed. And in this dream they led me by the hand, under an autumn sky, wandering streets strewn with dry leaves. Together we came to our old haunt, where more friends greeted us; when they saw us coming, smiles lit their faces. They pointed us to seats at the far corner and produced pints of coffee-dark beer. They said, “None of you has changed.” They lamented that joy can’t stay, that friends meet only for a while before having to part again. “There’s hardly time to say hi before it’s ending,” said one. And then I woke and stretched my hands out to them, and there was nothing there at all.

Writer’s Cramp #5

Random Insane Dream Journal Excerpts

I began keeping a dream journal back in July, hoping to cultivate a more active dream life and maybe spur some lucid dreams in the process. On the first point I’ve been successful, recording an average of one page per night of my subconscious adventurings. On the latter point, not so much. But something I realize is that the contents of a person’s dream journal, read out of context, have the potential to be equal parts terrifying and hilarious. To wit:

26 July 2014, 1:36 AM — I am a mid-level Pokemon-style dragon in an RPG come to life. On the busy streets of a major city, I am on the hunt for a specific car. What my intentions are with the car, I’m not certain. All I know is that when I spot it, a late-model oxblood Mustang, it’s driving very slowly through a hospital zone clogged with idling green-and-white ambulances. It spontaneously explodes in that moment, flipping forward in slow motion as the fireball erupts like the car’s passed over an enormous landmine. I hear the word scrubs from nowhere in particular and am filled with profound disappointment.

29 July 2014, 7:23 AM — Have I attended a convention? It seems so.

8 August 2014, 7:20 AM — Just the vague notion of inconsequence.

20 August 2014, 5:01 AM — I ride into a federal prison that bears an uncanny resemblance to Walmart. My transportation is a Winnebago. The other prisoners predictably test me in their various ways, for sex, for extortion. They all fail. Instead of succumbing to their wills, I go browse the aisles. Someone is with me, at least through the books section, but I don’t pay enough attention to him to recall who he is, or what he says to me there. I find myself suddenly back at the front of the prison/store, sitting in a wide wheelchair, awkwardly propelling my way past the checkouts, where some of the Crossroads square cooks seem to be comparing their answers to a quiz in a ladies magazine. Another prisoner tells me I can get around faster in my chair. The next thing I know, I’m rocketing through the sky, a bullet-shaped medieval French helmet on my head, out of control but at least headed in a straight line. When I land at last, in spite of all the distance I ought to have covered, I’m still in the prison.

21 September 2014, 2:24 AM — Pulling up to the 51st Street Muddy’s, I see old friends seated outside as if it’s the late-’90s all over again. There’s Shira, Tara, Mike, Brahm, Haven — even Ashley, waving. I’m on my way into the coffeehouse when Francisco bounces out, excitable and as over-the-top as ever. There’s no feeling of reunion; it’s as if no time at all has passed. All I feel is the warmth of friendship. When Francisco breaks away, I see that the Plaza lights are dead. All power has simply gone out. I take off the tie I’ve been wearing and rebutton my collar points. A couple of fat black flies land on my hand and bite me, stinging sharply. I shoo them and they dance wildly in the air a moment before lighting on my face and biting again. I swipe at them and catch both in my hand (my left!); however, not wanting to crush them and get bug guts all over my bare palm, I release the irritating bastards only to have them land and bite me a third time. It’s at this point that the dream decoheres. A mangy gray-and-brown cat claws its way onto a horse’s back and clings to its mane as the two animals ride off into some stunted vegetation.

6 October 2014, 5:45 AM — I’m on a walking tour of Paris, the first portion of which finds me swimming with a few other tourists in the Seine. The river is filthy, of course, and practically alive with snakes. One, a ropy one with scales like polished onyx, writhes on the water’s surface near my face, threatening in its ease of motion. I swim away, only to come up against a bobbing turd. A girl I’m with shrieks. We all clamber up the bank via a set of slick stone steps and head off to explore more of the city. At a fruit stand run by a man wearing a handlebar mustache and greengrocer apron, we sample what are marked as $5 apiece blueberries yet are clearly green apples. Then we buy up the huckster’s entire stock, because we’re ugly Americans who are too worried about appearing cultured not to buy them (and if these are what the French call blueberries, well…).

27 October 2014, 6:00 AM — I’m sharpening pencils that keep breaking off. The sharpener itself is mounted inside a small safe, and as I pull each pencil out to inspect its point, a woman seated right in front of the safe door gets shavings in her hair. She acts put-out by this but won’t move.

7 November 2014, 1:46 AM — Trying to fold a big, ripped bag of Doritos in a house full of sleeping war veterans who are crashed out in easy chairs and on fold-out surfaces, I can’t find any room in which I won’t wake someone. Eventually I give up and just crumple the thing, making one hell of a racket. Nobody stirs. The elderly sleep more soundly than I thought. But morning comes on quickly. All the aging soldiers, pilots, sailors, and marines gathering their bags for a planned reunion. I board a single-prop airplane to join them, and end up flying over the gorgeous African veldt at sunup. Rivers coil into the distance. Green trees reach up from vast grassy plains. The early morning fog swirls away to reveal that I’m actually just watching a fundraiser for the World Wildlife Fund, the greasy, dark-haired host of which makes me mutter, “This is such bullshit.”

15 November 2014, 3:18 AM — Following what seems at first like a video game shootout with a deranged hag and her bald, apparently inbred son, I meet up with a large-framed black guy who, for whatever reason, wants me traveling with him to Texas in his vintage pastel pink Cadillac. He believes his children are in Houston, and he claims to need me to help him secure the paternity test. Good times.

5 December 2014, 5:00 AM — I’m building a Lego spaceship, a mostly black one. Kelly is with me and we’re floating bodily above the houses that line Ward Parkway. I’m pulling random pieces from the ether, clicking each in place as I think it fits on the ship in my hand. While I’m busy with this, Kelly makes a deal with her mother for some drugs behind one of the houses, where I can’t see her, emerging with two pieces I neither need nor particularly want, as though they compensate for her bad behavior. The spaceship I finally build lands on a verdant planet that looks like true paradise: bubbling springs, mossy rocks, thick willows, fallen oaks, and other idyllic woodsy stuff. One of the astronauts disembarks and goes down on all fours to drink from a fresh-looking brook trickling over round white stones. No sooner than he’s taken a sip, he begins to choke. Eyes wide and panicked, he gurgles a warning to his crewmates: “You’re all going to die!” His lifeless body collapses at the edge of a gorgeous, shimmering pool and is immediately seized in the enormous hand of a being that looks like the Abominable Snowman from those awful old stop-motion Christmas programs, only with a greenish masklike marking over its eyes. The astronaut’s head fits neatly in its maw as it crunches down and decapitates the man. Garish red blood goes everywhere, and Kelly laughs at the grainy 1950s horror-movie vibe of it all.