++++++

I forge my own escape plan
while you rail against something more attuned to
your personal struggle and seeking newfound glory
in the dream I saw a wrecked thing between us
laying like a ship but more a flag at half-mast
although it didn't symbolize death
more a parting
a thing that once was
is gone
but that doesn't always imply death
and shouldn't stand in the way for a dead thing
we have a tendency to make bi-lines out of truths
to filter decisions between divided frames
practically armoring the outside as if the ways can't
bleed leak feed into the other
I saw the impact we had made on one another
a combination of secured expectation
coiling towards                          codependency
the French don't even a word for this ^
they just borrow the American word 
add an acute accent codépendance
we were taking a subway
in my dream
to move boxes of our personal belongings
to a new tiny cramped space
I was starting over
the coast sang through my neck
it was like an empty Coney Island
I haven't managed to dilute dreams into a hegemonic device
to better manipulate my current state
I see dreams more as a feeding tube lodged between
an inner desire to bear witness to cognitive energies
that dine off the dandruff of our souls
galactical shifting inner markets
where trades happens more often than currency
where eating can be presented but never ingested
the dream is like an endless ekphrastic rhetorical exercise
of the dramatic that we can plug into our poetry
I used to be a lucid dreamer in my early 20s
analyzing the dream while inside the dream
a hand strangling my neck
wake up wake up this isn't real
my eyelids had tiny weights on them
of course I wasn't actually being choked to death
my conscience clear of emergency
anxiety tousled in a slipknot
redeeming inner monologues for bonus points
leveling up in my mind
to see more deliberately  into current psychosis
swing I should not gravitate
swing I should not yield
sing I divide falling holy into one
lassoed around the sun

+++++++

love
how much longer will this last

Paige Taggart is is the author of two full-length collections, Or Replica (Brooklyn Arts Press) and Want for Lion (Trembling Pillow Press) and 5 chapbooks, most recently I am Writing To You From Another Country; Translations of Henri Michaux (Greying Ghost Press). Faux Pas is a chapbook forthcoming with Factory Hollow Press. She runs her own small business, a jewelry line (mactaggartjewelry.com).