Kangaroo in Tupperware





In the dream, I have one minute
to shove a full-sized, angry kangaroo
into a standard Tupperware container
I can do it, but the lid keeps
popping off, and the kanga springs out
fighting

The dream dictionary says:
"Any vessel or container is a traditionally Freudian symbol of the — or
womb," and
"The kangaroo is a strong and powerful animal. It has huge feet that it uses
for mobility and self-protection. Your dream may have to do with issues of
strength and the freedom to move."

I shall try to analyze my dream:

Perhaps I am the kangaroo
and the Tupperware is society
trying to categorize me

Or perhaps I am the Tupperware
and the kangaroo is the world
refusing to climb in with me

Maybe you are the kangaroo
and here I am trying desperately to keep you
in me
reader, lover, memory, dream

Or the Tupperware is my body
and the kangaroo is the breath of my life
flowing in and out of me like wind

As my soul, the kangaroo needs
this Tupperware as a boat
to carry it through the waters
of the physical, all the way to the far shore

The Tupperware is time
and the kangaroo is life
bounding out of it into a vast desert
of death and eternity

Or the kangaroo is ideas
and the Tupperware is words
unable to preserve it

I will think more on this, but right now
I have opened the Tupperware dish containing
today's lunch
and a kangaroo is now loose here in my office
tapping its long foot, reaching down into its pocket
for something, probably
a gun or a knife

or a memento that is
so thoughtful and personal that
I am already crying

Lytton Bells' work has appeared in Outsider Ink , Poems-for-All , Poetry Now , Poetic Voices, Slow Trains, VOICE, among others. His"Book of Chaps" will be available any day now through the 24th Street Irregular Press.


E-mail: lytton_bell@hotmail.com


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