A Dream of Jack

Last night I dreamt of Jack the Ripper.

I was walking into the bedroom,

presumably of a trailer park whore somewhere

in Butte, Montana, having moved there for obscure reasons.

As we lay in bed, she flipped the channel

again and again.

***

On the screen,

a circle of obscure phrases were compared

by an animated pointer

--all having something or other to do

with

Jack the Ripper.

Unpleasant

she must have thought.

So I turned it.

It flickered to fuzzy static

before turning back to the same channel.

It did this again and again,

as if to say

--You can't change this channel!

***

One supposes there are patterns

etched deep into the face of time,

old roles that are resumed,

life-after-life.

Are all of these things

quantified by a logically ordered universe,

overseen by a zealous, inscrutable God?

Because we've been here before.

My mind flashes back to the other night,

coming home to the trailer park with the

Woman of Questionable Virtue.

Maybe this is straight from the last call at a local tavern.

We go inside,

and she begins to peruse, with rapt attention,

a large, yellowed sheaf of newsprint with the name

CATHERINE EDDOWES

printed upon the face of it, in flowing script.

She looks at me curiously...

...as if she is privy to a private joke or gag.

(And my memory flashes back to an ex-love, lying in bed. Raped she is, by seemingly invisible forces, confessing whatever sins seem most readily applicable to her current condition--"And I'm a liar. And I'm a fraud. And I'm a bitch. And I'm a...")

You get the picture.

And there is a direct line of descent, I take it,

from the body on the bed, to the woman in the trailer park;

and, dancing back through the ages,

a body discovered near Flower and Dean Street, in London, long ago.