Ron Silliman Dream #7: In a Boat

I'm treading water far out at sea and just starting to really panic when a boat appears. It’s not very big and The Big Man, Ron Silliman, is on it.

“What’s going on, buddy?” he asks me and, after I tell him how happy I am to see him, he tells me he’d love (and he draws the word “love” out for just a bit too long) “love” to help me on board and give me a ride back to shore——but, first, I need to recite ten poems that mean absolutely nothing.

“Ten poems,” he explains, “that are complete nonsense.”

I’m kind of tired out here in the middle of the ocean, so I start reciting, but he quickly interrupts me: “C’mon, man. You know better. That just a mangled version of one of Berrigan’s Sonnets.”

So, I try a nursery rhyme and of course that won’t do.

But then I a moment of great inspiration I start barking and he breaks out into a huge grin and, leaning over the side of the boat, begins to pat my head: “There’s a good boy. There’s a good boy.”

The sad thing’s I don’t remember getting out of the water. I’m just there in the blue waves barking and Silliman’s patting my head: “There’s a good boy. There’s a good boy.”