Basements Choked with Longing

The core content and purpose
Of dreaming is purgation
Of overwrought emotions,

Whatever powdered fragments
And oddments of memories
Are jumbled in to bind them.

The events and warped faces,
The senseless combinations,
And the poorly lit backdrops

Are irrelevant. The lab
Is running experiments
With combustible feelings

In dark and downward kingdoms
Where the only sense is felt.
Dreams are felt distilleries

Of moonshine and turpentine
And dynamite—nurseries
Of those strange intensities

With which we melt curious
Combinations, chimeras.
The monsters of our fables

Don’t represent emotions.
The burning floods of feeling
In dreams would drown day’s dragons.