Originally posted 6/6/2012.

In half of my dreams
I see a door
sacred to no two faced God Janus,

but instead dedicated
to a three faced
unnamed god:

one face for out,
one face for in,
one face looking back to the world

that would have been
had I never seen this door,
a face that’s always looking away. 

~~~~

I always wake up angrier
than I was
when I went to sleep.

In the last dream of the night,
I am being beaten
by a masked man.

He asks me
how it feels 
to be beaten.

I lie that 
it is neither bad nor good,
that it has no flavor.  

Let me spice it then for you
with more blows, different blows,
he says,

slamming my hand 
in the door
as I try to push through.

~~~~ 

Always aching when I wake,
always wishing I could
just go through the door

into the day
happy, light
and smiling.

I live in
this wrong world
of in or out, this or that.

I hate walking
through that door.
Some days, I try not to.

On those days my hands
look like meat from taking the beating
as I try to stand in between the rooms —

fingers clawed into the jambs,
terrified of the unnamed man
doing the banging.

Choose, friend, he says.
Crawl through or hang back,
but the door is here;

you have to choose
now that you know
it’s here.

What of
the promise of the third face,
I ask.  

No one ever
gets to look that god
in the eye,

he says.
They all die 
trying.