From the author: “Some background on the Avatar sequence: while hospitalized, I received in the mail a version of a pop song, the lyrics of which I had written for Dutch children learning English; the song kept playing in my head, and the next night’s dreams had me flying around through the universe, waking, as the song chants, in a rain for-est; this dream intensified for several nights; culminating the night I took a sleep study; the small cover photograph (lowest) was taken by the sleep technician, who tried valiantly to get me through a good night’s sleep; the waking dream persisted, and it was not to be. Where is Sigourney Weaver when you need her?”

For more about Mark Schorr, click here.

Click on the song to listen.

26. O to be an avatar
climb into a sleep machine
for a split night study

***

fit to another mask
& wake up in a different dream

***

pressure applied at best
obtains a decent rest
until movement of the rapid eye

***

visits clouds a mile high
pens a conscious symmetry.

27. Last night: a dripping mask
with insomnia and
dry throat awoke

***

with Three Mile Island in his head
and no shut offH valve

***

Each attempt to find the leak
in the utility pipe
or the sleep mask was in vain

***

Woke up with a soft palette
and vanished dream

28. Then his mind moved beyond
a walk around Walden Pond
in the dead of winter

***

This wasn’t rocket science
just Buddhist economics

***

a small pond diverting resources
from the larger source
until another Walden was born.

***

and when it fit the picture
moved into it

***

life now moves
beyond the picture
of an unmade bed

29. Here he remembered
how many questions
he had come to walk around

***

Were all resources finite
for good things coming hence?

***

How deep could a pond be
both for resources
and source of excellence?

***

Or how many Waldens spent
to preserve one fresh pond.

30. Takes the sleep study
but can’t sleep more than five
works overtime in overdrive

***

Takes a picture there instead
pictures of an unmade bed

***

All night long the rapid eye
pans his thoughts
a slow steadying of pressure

***

in the morning they say
five hours or fewer were logged

***

Riding a bicycle again
seems like the best thing
that ever happened to him.

31. One day the bed gets folded
the room cleaned
(except the corner where pressure’s taken)

***

More blood pressures
sent over the land line

***

Each visitor in the shaker chair
who applies the pressure
again reanimates the frame

***

The nurse sits who on sofa says
“Don’t get too obsessed with pressure.”