I had a dream I had to traverse the edges of hell for some reason. They resembled the London underground except there was no map and demons kept trying to get your soul. Something they liked to do was offer people youth. They’d take away the ageing, the mistakes and painful memories and so on, and keep them. So they had half your soul. Then what remained of you was your ignorant younger self without the benefit of your experiences to keep you safe. So they had that half too.

I had a dream that I was summoned into a danganronpa style death game with a bunch of other people with lucid dream powers but the god-like being that had summoned us all had assumed we would just automatically try to kill each other and hadn’t really thought beyond that. They saw me getting along with the others and were like ‘truly your nefariousness knows no bounds if even I, the master of all dimensions, cannot guess at the culmination of your evil schemes >:3′ and I was like bro, I’m just nice.

I had a dream I was playing an RPG supposedly based on an obscure series of scifi novels, set aboard a derelict spaceship. Thanks to some bad decisions early on we got betrayed to the merchant guild, who fixed our hyperdrive but trapped us in a stratified society of capitalist serfdom. I spent ages trying to explore the ship and find other subversives but I was powerless and useless at scheming, and was close to being discovered.

Freedom came unexpectedly. A genomod slave had secretly slipped her programming, disguised herself as her owner and infiltrated the lodge cars, a train of space yachts outside the main ship where the oligarchs lived. She explained herself before dropping her disguise and detonating the lodge cars. Then she declared that we were all to blame but only the Archmistress, who had betrayed us to the guild in order to rule, deserved death, and killed her. The Archmistress' guards killed the slave, but because she was a genomod she had a memory module that could be plugged into a regenerator to grow her a new body.

My co-conspirators and I restored order and realised that although we'd failed as rebels, we now had the opportunity to form a democratic government. But there was a problem. The debt we felt to the slave was immense, and if she was revived, the people would call for her to be leader. But she was inhuman, practically immortal, and her life had been defined by violence and revenge. To revive her might be raising a tyrant. To deny the will of the people would undermine our democracy before it began. But if someone was willing to betray everything we stood for, kill the hero that had saved us, and take the fall...

Blocks

Inhabited geometry, resembling both a crystal and a fungus, read like sheet music, each element corresponding to a note or beat (compositions differing depending on whether you go side-to-side or up-and-down).

Four faces (or more) of glass and stone, each faceless, but yielding (softly) to time and attention more colours and more patterns as the singular, continuous motion of the falling sun is separated into a binary series of on-and-off in two-and-four dimensions. At night, a subtle rainbow, half-sleeping, as lighted walls paint lit external windows in various hues and unlit walls paint unlit windows in darkness.

Of course, the movement, occasional, distant, animal, unknown (but recognised). PEOPLE, an uncountable noun, presented here as a plurality of abstract individuals, separate and connected. These too have faces, faceless (softly yielding?), a rainbow, here, in boxes, half-sleeping, in three-and-four dimensions, living hidden, alive, within. Without, the faceless walls, and the singular, continuous motion of the returning sun.

I had a dream that I was a child in a hot spring village in the mountains. There were no phones or cars, but we did have a corner shop that sold sweets and magazines. My friend left, time went on, and I grew up. But she came back, her entire body replaced with a transparent biotech prosthetic and flying a craft made of the same transparent material. She wouldn’t say what had happened but did say our village was more important than I knew, that an ancient being lived there, and it was in trouble. The hot springs had cooled, and the being was dying. Without heat, it would no longer be able to protect us, as it had done for millennia.

She opened her hands and showed me a living picture of the Earth, unfolding and inverting, containing the sky. I didn’t understand but she seemed excited about it and said it was our world’s destiny to evolve, and the time was coming soon.

I had a dream about a castle on an island, where I lived with a princess and some others. Every night, a huge wave would come and smash the castle to pieces, and every morning it would be standing again, as if nothing had happened. We were building a cellar, protected from the wave, where we’d store materials and hide out at night, trying to find a way to build defences or escape the island.

One evening, the princess took my hand and led me out onto the battlements. I could see the wave in the distance, but her gaze was unwavering as it approached. Trusting her, I stayed by her side. As it neared, I became scared and clung to her in panic, then as the wave crashed over us I felt overwhelming dread and exhilaration as I accepted my inevitable death, and freedom.

Then I was standing in the castle in the morning, as if nothing had happened.

I had a dream I met a woman who was sketching at a futuristic art gallery/mall. Her art was extremely good and I was immediately entranced. I struck up a conversation briefly but she seemed shy and I didn’t want to disturb her.

Another woman, the proprietor of the gallery, arrived and started aggressively criticizing the artist, acknowledging her genius talent but arguing it should be better, that although her work was cohesive, that also made it flat. I could see her point, but stayed silent. “If you can’t argue with yourself, how can your work say anything? Conflict is the essence of life.” The proprietor called over some guards including a young woman in a black outfit, who injected the artist with a yellow liquid. Her manner immediately changed and she became belligerent, shouting at the others and pushing them away.

“You have to stay calm,” I said, trying to think of a way to get her away. “Great,” she said, “another stranger telling me what to do. I know I have to stay calm, but these maniacs drugged me!” “Please,” I said, “I’m just trying to help.” “Yes, how noble of you to put up with me! Everyone always wants to ‘support’ me because I have talent and they don’t, and they think following me around can give them meaning. Maybe I don’t need any help!” She started running and the others followed. Her words stung because I knew she was right, but seeing this other side of her made me want to help her and get to know her more.

We chased through the gallery, across walkways and through crowds, and finally up a spiral staircase that went nowhere, where we lost sight of her. The woman in black came up beside me. “Oh well,” I said, hoping they’d give up. “Looks like she got away.” But the woman in black started feeling underneath the platform, where the artist was clinging to the underside. I climbed out and onto a pile of floating cylinders suspended magnetically under the platform. “I can’t hang on,” she muttered to herself. “I’ll fall sooner or later. But I can’t let go.” “It’s OK,” I said, trying to position myself underneath her on the cylinders. “I’ll catch you.” “So I can die for you?” she said. “Not for me,” I said, a bit exasperated, but seeing no other option, she let go and dropped on top of me. For a moment, the cylinders held our weight, then suddenly, we started to fall.

An Ordinance

Whatever I am, As much as I can, As long as it’s fun, And then let it go.

Some days, I think this: What if everything is exactly as it appears to be? No grand conspiracy.

Engines rumble in the world outside And reflected sunlight flickers across the ceiling; I call this ‘cars passing by’. An act of faith.

Another siren wails. More than the day before, or less?

On the rooftops, pigeons wander back and forth, stopping to preen. A woman on a balcony faces the morning sun, eyes closed and peaceful As a little girl pats her face excitedly.

I take a deep breath, and it becomes reality Every other future Crumbles into nothingness.

Is this the end of the world?

I speak not the Word For the Word is ‘to be’ I am the Word The world speaks only me

I seek not the Truth For the Truth is to seek I am the Truth Of which the world speaks

I can’t speak for everyone but despite this world’s problems I think we do live in a kind of paradise. Every day I eat wonderful food from across the world, I’m surrounded by people that I love and who love me, in their own ways, and computers, nuclear reactors, and modern medicine are no less fantastic than anything we could dream up in a story. It isn’t enough to make me happy, but I no longer feel as guilty as I did for that. It’s our eternal dissatisfaction that makes humans what they are, what gives us our incredible power to shape and reshape the world with a thought, lived through billions of lives in the blink of an eye, for a purpose none of us fully understand.

I believe that even when humans die out, as long as the genetic legacy of our planet survives, people much like us will continue dream and strive for their own kind of paradise in their image, as we have, and make a beautiful hash of it, as we have, on the bones of those who went before, under the stars. This is just one moment in a life amongst lives in a world among worlds, and it goes on. Maybe one day we’ll wake up from the dream and see things as they are, or maybe this is all just a random fluctuation in a particle of nothing. But for now, we’re here, and although it doesn’t always seem like it, everything is OK.

From a flicker of movement

To a flick of the eye

From the heart to the tongue

To an answer from why

Time passes in moments

The moments pass so

We know that now happened

A moment ago

More

More than this, the soul cries out, More than a life spent in fear, More than a coffee to drag you from bed and a pill to shove you back into it More than another pill when the first is not enough! More than smart clothes and hollow eyes And generosity without compassion.

Better squander all the day Within the foolish throng

Than scorn the day in lonely wit When all the fools have gone.

Name a thing to kill it Tomorrow, so you say. Tomorrow, words are nothing And action is today.

I who loved the dark, and hated what I couldn't see Embraced the known, a hated finity Turned inside-out, embracing divinity The nameless hate is still within me

The Brown Usk

Cold and rough the river flows As sunlight dances on the shallows Those shallows in which lovers meet Oppressed by summer's gentle heat

The Rain-and-Storm

Here am I, the rain-and-storm My body from the sea is born Within my breast the thunder peals But with soft tears I feed the fields

Nightmare

Taking only what is given Giving only what is right Waking with energy and sleeping with peace Surrounded by friends I ask for no more than this I want no more than this