Real is a face we slap on places—it’s all “real’s the way it is” like a slogan for something you probably use all the time but don’t need, adamantly overstated and buffpolished triteness so the words shine no matter what they say and that’s ok but not really so I’m dreaming on up instead, up upon some rough-edged workarounds, anyway, working on some way, a roundabout direct sort of straight through to dream way, and it’s working, I say, even if it’s not, even though working’s not really what I mean because it’s just being when it is, being here and doing, not trying to be *being seen* but be it, seen, glimpsed, being conscious of being but not overly conscious of doing, naïve and solid.

But here come these words again and something says “too much Faulkner” though it’s been a while since August lights and maybe if I say enough of the words they’ll finally all be gone and the space will be clear for finally saying things and I wonder why now I’m messing with more commas than usual, thinking splices are just for tying new knots and wondering how many mistakes were actually knew-nots made anyway, incidentally, like what happens in sleep stage five, like that, not like slogans. Period. Pause to inhale something definitive and hope I don’t write too much about breathing (knew-not?). “What do we (always) want?! Freedom! When do we (always) want it?! Preferably soon, ifthat’sok!” Pause to take it in and let it pass, comma, to hibernate in inhalation as covert prep for an overt exhaled action, sans slogan, and I hope he doesn’t mind too much I’m using him again. New knot. And it’s as real as it needs to be, like dreams are, yelled quietly in new vernacular.

That’s one thing I know, which italicized I think means I know what’s real—or what makes it—but it’s hard to say in plain font and straight speech. I go around and around imagining this could be that, two could be one, wrong could be right, or made, in could be out, up could be down, but not when you’re giving directions—and for that I’m called a dreamer like it’s slapped on my face. But I do it all the time so what’s real. There’s no point to make, only sense, I say as a muffled overt action, just waking up, recharged, muffled and mumbled, saying there’s nothing specific to remember as if real is really itself all only and all decided and done like The Way, there are only new knots out of knew-nots and it’s only life after all, all and only life passing by real dream faces and if I do nothing else in this time let me be sure I tie it all together so tight it leaves a mark that may unravel but won’t be undone.

This is about what freedom is. This is about change. This is about not getting caught. This is about fighting to see who joins, maybe even more for that than to see who wins. This is about liberation from invisibility. No, it’s about being selectively seen. It’s about being so deeply touched your surfaces become untouchable because you know the dream-real feel of certain real-dream fingertips and your real is as if underground to hibernate and recharge sub rosa, and sure, you’ll lift the manhole cover and come up to exhale coversions and have a little look see at what we turn dreams into, what they become, furtive and discernible, your cords and cables and wires knotted up behind you to keep the charge going from down deep because that’s real and I dreamed it.

It’s about magic and transformation. It’s about not performing. It’s about the fakeness of overspoken reality, the realness of undersold dream, and the freedom in between where love and fight and all the rest resides. It’s about me telling you what it’s about because it’s not that anything goes, but most things do, and some fly straight out the window, telling so maybe we’ll crawl up together from beneath patched, uneven pavements to steal what’s really far-fetched, what we knew and what not, feeling the ground under our feet and charge in our beings and listening to what our hearts are saying and hearing, tasting, touching how real responds, forever marked by dream, knowing not whether saying those two words enough, together, will merge them into one like love does, like we do, and it’ll never be the same.