Today I woke from a waking dream.

Footsteps towards the gateway between this realm and the other.

I emerged into a palace of beige and maroons. curtains latticed and saintlike. guided by my brother and his breath, I traced his footsteps towards the coast.

There above the shore, floating gossamer and godlike, I saw a great starship, crystalline and explicit in iridescence.

I followed elf tracks towards ten great green mountains. hopping through the snow, sprite-like and deft with each step. sprinting across the cliffs and ever towards an aquarian queen.

By horse back I arrived at her door, by sunrise I woke into yet another dream.

One where, in reprieve of sake haunts and empty wallets, the three of us devoured iced tea in longfellow parking lots and skirmished the local youth in pick up games of street ball.

One where, feet bruised and blackened by tar, we stood upon tip-toe to catch a singular glimpse of a single butterfly. so overcome with its beauty, so refreshingly drenched in heartache, we forgot to distinguish what is from what was and at once became a new entity. something altogether whole and different and new. something tangible and real and quite beyond our former sentiments of life and death. Jumping lucid into dreaming and slipping headfirst into wakefulness.

First I ran beside my brothers, perched knightly upon their metallic and rusted steeds. Flesh drumming upon pavement in some primal rhythm.

I saw wisps of cotton falling in the sunlight like some surreal summer snowfall over a river smooth as glass.

We biked for miles under the city sun. the sky so blue it swallowed the trees whole like some wailing infant ocean.

Hither and fro. In quest of beer and joyful exuberance. throwing shadows along the great arches of that bridge and contemplating those brave underground dwellers and the engineering mystique of those depth charging ancients.

Aquatic apes stretching across cobblestone. peddles digging kindly into my simian arches. I began to dream again. I began to dream deeper still. I saw the pharaoh commanding light from the mouth of a serpent. I saw great birdlike beings giving alms of navigation and architecture. exchanging gifts of lifting unimaginable tons of stone for portions of gold and silver and nickel.

I saw a spectral cord of light vibrating in coruscating patterns both tetrahedral, cartesian, endless, and ephemeral.

I woke somewhere riding amidst a bike gang in North East Minneapolis.

I was both David and Goliath.

A child slaying a giant, purged from that towering sense of self, diving head first into the absolute freedom that is nothingness.

Nothing but heartbeat and breath. nothing but chemicals firing.

Nothing but a middle finger perched firmly atop a fist, waging graciously at meat headed troglodytes resting obtusely in their decrepit smogmobiles who, upon meeting testosterone with wit, drove away into the endless concrete sea. contemplating for the first time, that maybe, just maybe-

Two wheels are better than four.