by Shane McCrae
dreaming is incompatible with freedom because
dreaming leaves us with no sphere of action
—Susan Stewart
I rolled in glowing shreds like sparks through the thimble door
And I beheld beheld’s the only word for it
I saw but now I’m writing it it might be helpful
Since anyone can die
since it might help the dead
And that’s still helpfulness right sure it is advice
To the disincarnate that’s still help I rolled the many
Glowing with the freed light the many shreds of me
Strained through the net
that bound me to the bird that had
Bound me the bloody shreds were free the way the light
That clung to them was free released but with a purpose
I rolled through the door and in the HR bunker glowing
Bloody beheld my purpose
saw with every shred
Of me as if my skin and guts were eyes suspend
-ed from the ceiling must have been the ceiling was
Hanging on wires from something too high up to see
A giant screen
divided into many screens
A monitor electric glowing hanging maybe
Fifty a hundred feet above a forest of
Gray cubicles impenetrable loud from which
A storm of static
but the storm was screams arose
An endless forest like a wall but I could see
The boundary of each cubicle in front of me
A wall in parts each hopeless as an endless wall
Each closed no anywhere a window door
except
No roof on any on the monitor I saw
In each a different torment different suffering
For what I guess each for a different sin the screen
Expanding constantly
new cubicles appearing
New cables hissing down from the too-distant ceiling
As if the light on the screen got heavier with each
New sin in each new cubicle at first just one
Person the torment but then soon
another person
Sooner another one I watched the cubicles
Fill up the screams were right away too loud for me
To hear them getting louder I can’t write down all
The pain I saw
in the first cubicle I saw
I saw as if the camera floated high above it
Swimming in later the bird told me molten copper
Law told me later men the damned I saw were men
Jawless their faces partially submerged
so that
The copper poured through them erupted from their backs
Having first burst their stomachs which were even as
They burst reforming to be burned apart again
Law smiled
describing what was happening inside them
The tightening of straps I took to be its smile
The men had when they were alive through screens had threatened
And mocked degraded others strangers anyone
They could I saw
in the first cubicle I saw
In the second cubicle I saw I saw a box
Tall as a coffin deeper than a coffin wide as
A phone booth phone booth deep from front to back from where
Men entered it
the coffin vertical men entered
The coffin through the lid as if it were a door
One at a time a line of men I couldn’t see
The back of the line it was beyond the boundary of
The cubicle
but each of the men I saw was wearing
A rubbery transparent business suit each floated
Through the door churning slow his legs and listlessly as
If he were running in his sleep or trying to
Away from demons monsters men
but couldn’t run
As often in a dream some power confounds your will
And though you try to fight you feel your punches brushing
Weightless against the face of your opponent inches
Above the dirt
each floated churning through the door
Each branded on his forehead and his cheeks with the name
The full name not the friendly name of the large bank
And with his title at the bank at which he worked
Each an executive
and in the box each screamed
Then a loud POP and out the back of the box each suit
Floated a pink mush dripping quietly inside it
Otherwise empty its legs dangling floated back
It must have floated back
to the back of the line I saw
Whole again men returning helpless to the box
I looked to Law itself more box than bird but also
It walked on legs that might have been a person’s legs
If Law were flesh and were not steel
I looked to Law
And would have spoken shouted but Law slapped a hand
Over my mouth I felt at once my mouth again
My body whole again Law turned to me and barked
While you watched two I watched them all
I’m watching still
Each cubicle each poor fuck shocked a hundred years
Of being shocked to be in Hell a thousand years
Of being shocked I’m smiling still but shit you fucking
Dick you don’t want to know
why you just want to know why
You don’t see women only men well you’re a man
And it’s the HR bunker Hell wants you to care
In Heaven you’d see men and women people who
Are neither people who are both
but no not you
No even when you’re watching people being tortured
You gotta fantasize it’s you not just the poor
Fucks suffering either no you gotta fantasize
The you who cares to watch them
I have watched and seen
I’m smiling ’cause I know you recognize my smile I
Could hurt you so you’ve learned my face and fuck I’m smiling
’Cause I know all the faces on the screen I recognize
Even the torn-off faces
lying flat in the dirt
I’m smiling ’cause I’m overfull with faces wait
No Law stopped barking and I heard the voice I now
Knew was the boss’s voice first muffled grunting as
If it were wrestling in Law’s chest with
what and then
A CLANG a THUMP then panting then a scraping sound
The sound of something heavy a thick stone lid being
Slid into place a marble lid and then I heard
The voice again Law’s beak not moving wide
Behold
Each screen a petal of a flower both rootless and
Eternal and you watching watch as angels watch
The Earth from their perspective yes you watch as though from
Above although you stand below
the special gift
I give your kind you people is perspective that’s
What all that garden slander means and see I made my
Own tree of wisdom and of being alive its petals
Ever budding spring
tree of one flower nonetheless
Diverse and more enfruited than mere trees FOR MAN
LAUGHS SOONER THAN HE LOVES ESPECIALLY WHEN HE LAUGHS
AT OTHERS’ HARM oh I’ve got casks of wisdom wisdom
Pours from each flattened head
and reddens leaf and petal
Listen I let you look around I could have claimed
You for my own at any time I didn’t have to
Capitulate I did the Weary One a favor
Letting you tour the place
but now I see I shouldn’t
Have given you a guide a demon’s better off
Attending to a single petal Law was made
For a fixed world the only multiplicities
A demon understands
are pornographic show
It growth and change as you have seen my garden grows
And changes and you show it the eternal justice
From which it draws its sense of purpose is not rock
But water
and it changes to fill different forms
No thing on which to stand but where to go with thirst
A demon has no hole with which to thirst to hunger
I should have warned the robot not to bring you here
And now it sleeps inside itself
and dreams and this
Is it its dream me talking now to you and you
I damn to live inside Law’s dream the boss stopped talking
And when he stopped Hell stopped I looked at the screen all
The images were still
I turned to Law and Law
Looked like a statue in an anime a steel
Memorial both too ridiculous and too
Beautiful to be real and looking close I saw
A light begin to brighten
the roof of Law’s beak
The light the only moving thing in the dream except
I could have moved but watched instead the edge of the light
Sliding across the roof of the beak first yellowing
The gray then
whitening the throatmost part of the beak
And then the middle then the tip the farther it
Moved the more still the torments looked the more Hell stopped
Seemed stopped it was a sign the dream was ending in
Law’s dream the end of punishment
is the end of the world
Poem copyright 2024 by Shane McCrae. All rights reserved.
See another poem from Shane McCrae debuted on The Fight & The Fiddle: “I squeezed through.”
Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt