This appears in a pre-2010 issue of Down in the Dirt magazine.
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“But from each crime are born bullets
that will one day seek out in you
where the heart lies.”
- Neruda
As in the multitude of dreams
I have where the bodies of my
victims, long buried, are discovered
& the hunt begins for the killer.
Always I panic that I have left
some part of myself at the crime
scene, some tiny fleck of DNA –
a hair, a fibre, a flake of skin –
that will lead the authorities my way,
& I’ll be herded up & taken away
to jail, never to see loved ones
again, my dog whimpering at
the gate. I dream this dream over
& over. But just who are the victims
of my crimes & why do I kill them?
Maybe it is evidence of what Adler
called the “will to power”, or what
Frued deemed “wish fulfillment” –
the simple desire to be rid of those
who inconvenience us – easy
enough to put a knife in their
chest, a bullet in their head. But
more likely it is Jung’s theory
of compensation that explains this
dream, that it is, in fact, aspects of
my own Self that I am murdering
& that every dream is a reminder
of what I once was & am no longer,
except, that is, just under the
surface, where all the old Selves
lie quietly waiting to be rediscovered.
