Annotation of a Dream
Draft 2
11 June 2023
Animal J. Smith
i'll keep you safe.
what happened to us will never happen again,
to any human, any pup, i promise you,
and i will keep you, and your pack,
and all my pups from then to now and mine to come,
close and in my canine heart forever,
for every pup is a child of mine,
and you are my legacy on this Earth, mine forever,
oh i love you so, and i am yours and you are mine...
stay close to the ground, little one, it is where we belong.
“The poems of the project are attempts at writing into the gaps of dreams and what might have been.”
— Chris Gylee, performance artist, poet, lyricist, co-principal of ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS,
performance art collective based in Berlin, and author of 1997: Dream of Animal J. Smith, from FORTY,
published to the open Web August 2022, and the source for the generation of this work.
ANNOTATION OF A DREAM/EXPLICATION OF A DREAM
Animal disappeared completely.
He moved to New York and got covered in dust
And the world went sideways
I slept the sleep of Rip van Winkle
That scion of Upstate where the headless horseman roamed
Looking for an honest man, holding a light against the night
Instrument unplayable, then lost,
Muse doubly rebuffed
And the riches swiped like a MetroCard
Archives gone the way of Alexandria
The lighthouse Fresnel dimmed
Silent and useless against the relentless fog
Overrun by tendrils of automation
Kelp becoming kudzu, invasive and lurking
Just under the surface of consciousness
I AM ALIVE, I screamed
Two decades howling from under the mud
Pockets of salvation, bubbles in the odd airlock
That would cross my stumbling path
As I dreamed of redemption and return
Recalled to life, the tale of one city
I, Sydney Carton, Dickensian double,
Lacking the name that was once all my own
Generic in form, unremarkable concept,
Could have been anyone else anywhere,
Any time but this one, eternally out of joint
Lost by the wind grieved, I can’t go home again,
My home wiped from Earth’s face, that grundstück reclaimed
By a new generation, suddenly, and now,
The place I knew, ravaged. All records cremated,
Now in the lungs and the cells of my neighbors
Colleagues and friends, fuck buddies and lovers
Slumped in the bar car, the Metro North train
First stop in Stamford, pissing out the Stoli
Along with the atoms of my life’s work and hope
There lies the record, the shared DNA
In the creamy and chewy remains of the many
Forever unfound by the snouts of the canines
Good boys and girls all with powerful noses
Finding the fragments of fathers and lovers
Spread on the roofs of the offices, shuttered,
Abandoned that day with the calendar pages
Frozen in place, all pages unturned
Mold in the coffee cups, strange new bacteria
Scientists told us the buildings left empty
For years past the blast were now incubating
Life forms unknown and new. Hardly a blessing
To us and to me. We’d already been poisoned. Our eyes long since melted,
Images burned in our eyeballs forever
Warping our vision with horror. Unthinkable -
Now our dark treasure. With whom could I share it,
Who’d not be destroyed by recounting the sight
And the smell. God, the smell. Astringent and bitter
And strangely organic. The taste in my mouth
Walking from my ruined home to the subway
Chewing the air as I walked along Fulton Street
Up to the 2 train, choking and hacking up
All of the wormwood remains of that day
Filling my vision, corrupting my head,
Knowing the answer so soon to the query:
Where did they all go? The diligent doggies
Missing the atoms too small to sniff out
Filtered through noses of we who survived
The lost and unfound had now found their new dwelling
Inside of our bronchial tubes. By my reckoning,
They are alive. And I carry their spirits,
Ambitions and dreams.
ii.
Lives and identities, halfway recalled,
Twenty-one years gone. One-third of my life has been
Stolen from me. I did not ask for this.
ask some raw psychic, some dubious charlatan Steeped in Kabbalah and other fine mysticals,
Tuning his sorcery through his divining rod
Straight into you. And I know what he’ll tell you:
It was for no reason, no reason at all.
Foolish of you for imposing your rational
Westernized conjuring, trying to solve
What’s unsolvable. Just as the why of that day
Vexes the lot of you. Overtone series
Shed all its partials directly on you
And you’re surprised at the force of that echo
Impacting your predestined path?
Now get out of here,
Back to the business of making yourself
Useful – and slam! Goes the door to the psychic.
I turn from the wreckage of two decades past
Eyeing my inbox, the good and the evil
Fighting for primacy into my workflow,
Tugging my collar back into the studio -
Playtime is over, pup. Get back to work!
Never forget, so many of us
Died without reason, was written in chalk
Right on the asphalt at Market and Castro
1st of December, and I had just written
Names of my friends and my mentors and lovers
Outside the bars that remained after plague
Gone without reason. No reason at all.
Day without reason, forever eluding you,
Lost and come back for no reason at all.
[endpoint of Annotation of a Dream – Draft 2, in progress]
[Animal J. Smith, June 11, 2023, San Francisco, CA]
[Shared from OneDrive by link via Instagram to Chris Gylee of Once We Were Islands]
what happened to us will never happen again,
to any human, any pup, i promise you,
and i will keep you, and your pack,
and all my pups from then to now and mine to come,
close and in my canine heart forever,
for every pup is a child of mine,
and you are my legacy on this Earth, mine forever,
oh i love you so, and i am yours and you are mine...
stay close to the ground, little one, it is where we belong.
“The poems of the project are attempts at writing into the gaps of dreams and what might have been.”
— Chris Gylee, performance artist, poet, lyricist, co-principal of ONCE WE WERE ISLANDS,
performance art collective based in Berlin, and author of 1997: Dream of Animal J. Smith, from FORTY,
published to the open Web August 2022, and the source for the generation of this work.
ANNOTATION OF A DREAM/EXPLICATION OF A DREAM
Animal disappeared completely.
He moved to New York and got covered in dust
And the world went sideways
I slept the sleep of Rip van Winkle
That scion of Upstate where the headless horseman roamed
Looking for an honest man, holding a light against the night
Instrument unplayable, then lost,
Muse doubly rebuffed
And the riches swiped like a MetroCard
Archives gone the way of Alexandria
The lighthouse Fresnel dimmed
Silent and useless against the relentless fog
Overrun by tendrils of automation
Kelp becoming kudzu, invasive and lurking
Just under the surface of consciousness
I AM ALIVE, I screamed
Two decades howling from under the mud
Pockets of salvation, bubbles in the odd airlock
That would cross my stumbling path
As I dreamed of redemption and return
Recalled to life, the tale of one city
I, Sydney Carton, Dickensian double,
Lacking the name that was once all my own
Generic in form, unremarkable concept,
Could have been anyone else anywhere,
Any time but this one, eternally out of joint
Lost by the wind grieved, I can’t go home again,
My home wiped from Earth’s face, that grundstück reclaimed
By a new generation, suddenly, and now,
The place I knew, ravaged. All records cremated,
Now in the lungs and the cells of my neighbors
Colleagues and friends, fuck buddies and lovers
Slumped in the bar car, the Metro North train
First stop in Stamford, pissing out the Stoli
Along with the atoms of my life’s work and hope
There lies the record, the shared DNA
In the creamy and chewy remains of the many
Forever unfound by the snouts of the canines
Good boys and girls all with powerful noses
Finding the fragments of fathers and lovers
Spread on the roofs of the offices, shuttered,
Abandoned that day with the calendar pages
Frozen in place, all pages unturned
Mold in the coffee cups, strange new bacteria
Scientists told us the buildings left empty
For years past the blast were now incubating
Life forms unknown and new. Hardly a blessing
To us and to me. We’d already been poisoned. Our eyes long since melted,
Images burned in our eyeballs forever
Warping our vision with horror. Unthinkable -
Now our dark treasure. With whom could I share it,
Who’d not be destroyed by recounting the sight
And the smell. God, the smell. Astringent and bitter
And strangely organic. The taste in my mouth
Walking from my ruined home to the subway
Chewing the air as I walked along Fulton Street
Up to the 2 train, choking and hacking up
All of the wormwood remains of that day
Filling my vision, corrupting my head,
Knowing the answer so soon to the query:
Where did they all go? The diligent doggies
Missing the atoms too small to sniff out
Filtered through noses of we who survived
The lost and unfound had now found their new dwelling
Inside of our bronchial tubes. By my reckoning,
They are alive. And I carry their spirits,
Ambitions and dreams.
ii.
Lives and identities, halfway recalled,
Twenty-one years gone. One-third of my life has been
Stolen from me. I did not ask for this.
ask some raw psychic, some dubious charlatan Steeped in Kabbalah and other fine mysticals,
Tuning his sorcery through his divining rod
Straight into you. And I know what he’ll tell you:
It was for no reason, no reason at all.
Foolish of you for imposing your rational
Westernized conjuring, trying to solve
What’s unsolvable. Just as the why of that day
Vexes the lot of you. Overtone series
Shed all its partials directly on you
And you’re surprised at the force of that echo
Impacting your predestined path?
Now get out of here,
Back to the business of making yourself
Useful – and slam! Goes the door to the psychic.
I turn from the wreckage of two decades past
Eyeing my inbox, the good and the evil
Fighting for primacy into my workflow,
Tugging my collar back into the studio -
Playtime is over, pup. Get back to work!
Never forget, so many of us
Died without reason, was written in chalk
Right on the asphalt at Market and Castro
1st of December, and I had just written
Names of my friends and my mentors and lovers
Outside the bars that remained after plague
Gone without reason. No reason at all.
Day without reason, forever eluding you,
Lost and come back for no reason at all.
[endpoint of Annotation of a Dream – Draft 2, in progress]
[Animal J. Smith, June 11, 2023, San Francisco, CA]
[Shared from OneDrive by link via Instagram to Chris Gylee of Once We Were Islands]