Reoccurring

Several species of reoccurring dreams

have been visited upon me.

I am receiving installments 

where I am on the Korean peninsula

riding a train and looking out the window at the countryside.

"Parts of Spain look like this," I think to myself.

One installment awhile back turned out not to be a train 

but a series of screens and projectors 

set up to make me think I was on a train.

I don't talk to anybody, just walk around.

In the last one I was standing in the DMZ.  

How did that happen?  

I think I'm waiting for instructions from somebody.  

Then I wake up.

There's this other dream I keep having 

where I drown in a tsunami.

It happens just outside of Nahcotta, Washington, 

on the Long Beach peninsula.

Another peninsula.  There you go.  

I see water just coming along up the road 

like it has somewhere on land to go.

It gradually pours in everywhere 

and starts washing everything in it's path away.

I'm swept off my feet and pulled under, 

all the while thinking, 

"Wow, so this is what it's like to die." 

Each time this dream happens, 

somebody different from my life is there.  

It could be anybody.  

There's no discernible reasoning 

behind who shows up.  

Friends, enemies, 

people I've seen and never spoke to, 

are all just as likely to show up. 

Whoever shows up 

is always consumed with panic and distress.  

I spend my last moments trying to be calm

so whoever is with me will stop being hysterical.  

While this is going on, 

I think about what kind of selfish bastard I am

to fake being at peace and calm 

with what's about to happen to us 

only so they won't upset me.

Then I wake up.