A fierce and humid diablo wind blew in from the high desert into western Nevada last night that cut right through my slumber, shaking the branches of my dreams all the way down to the roots of that which I call the well of myself.
Dreams followed dreams like rush hour traffic upon a cosmic freeway on the way to the heavenly oblivion of skinny dipping with dragons on Saturn’s rings.
In one dream I dreamt I was a writer of a poet for a comical and philosophical variety show that was fading slowly from the spotlight of late night television. The low ratings loomed like a storm cloud that looked similar to an eery ominous grey ax at sunrise, or it could’ve just been a sort of metaphor for a dawn in some future life.
I shared a rather brightly lit stage with the host of the show, an aging celebrity type with a big fat Jewish looking nose. I shared an opening joke with him. He did not find it funny or amusing whatsoever.
“Where did you learn how to write comedy, kid?” He inquired. “In a goddamn chicken coop?” before he burst into an obnoxious laugh that sounded like Ray Liotta was laughing at his own jokes in that Goodfellas movie.
The wind and the warming stage lights on an empty stage blew endlessly around my vivid dreams. My bedroom walls moaned and groaned like the ghosts of a thousand lives were trying to tell me something, while the tree of life whipped back and forth violently against the comforts of a starry starry sky. A brief nightmare had shook me to my core like a pair of wound up chattering toy teeth on Halloween during an unforeseen earthquake.
My dreams swam and darted and chattered like two amphibious lost souls swimming in the fishbowl that used to sit on my bedside table.
I loosened the noose from around the neck of an unexpected brief nightmare as my tired eyes tunneled in from a somewhat peaceful sleep all the way into reality, just a few moments before dawn. I fell out of my warm and comfortable bed and into grey sweatpants. I then pulled my most trusted hoodie over my head before I headed downstairs and outside to check and see which way the wind was blowing on this fine and dandy, yet chilly November morning.
I had to escape anything that was reminiscent of sleeping in too late and dreaming about warming stage lights and not-so-funny nightmarish jokes.
Surprisingly enough, I was greeted by a whole gaggle of a flock of chickens standing in my yard because some fierce and humid wind had blown a bunch of wooden panels off a fence which led them astray from the comforts of their coop to right here surrounding me in a blown group and staring at me rather intently.
Of course when a path is clear, or a door is opened, or a few panels are blown off a fence, chickens have a extraordinary knack for getting out and about just to dance and party like it's nineteen ninety nine in a fierce wind.
That’s just the way chickens think. I think.
I wonder if they consider themselves lucky that they had not been blown away to the ends of the earth. I wonder if they would have been at all surprised if they had blown by the humid wind all the way to New York City, where they would surely be bathed in a milk and egg mixture and battered in flour and fried to a crisp just to be eaten up with a few douses of Crystal hot sauce on the side.
The sunrise and the wind were still the color of the ominous grey ax we touched on earlier in the dream. The chickens were warbling about strutting their stuff and staring accordingly at me as if it were my fault that the wind was blowing so goddamn hard. It was almost if they thought I had something to do with knocking the panels off of their quaint and smelly little chicken coop.
So, left with no choice, I started strutting my stuff and dancing around them, picking them up one by one and throwing them into the wind back over the fence to where they safely belonged.
And as I got to the last one and placed her upon my shoulder, a goddamn turkey strutted around the corner with his chest puffed up from out of the makeshift door of broken panels, and we just locked eyes as I threw the last chicken and the egg over the fence
And since I didn't have a turkey to cook on this blessed day, I grabbed the grey ax from the sunrise with my sights set on dinnertime;)
Lightheartedly,
Ryan Love
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