I Feel Like I Never Wake Up

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I feel like I never wake up
I sleep
But the reality of the
Real world
Seeps in
Like Flint Michigan
Water
And contaminates
My dreams

The after hours flop
Sweat scenarios
Are all the same
For example
I’m the only passenger in
Steerage on
A plane
There are no flight attendants
No pilot
No parachute
No toilet paper
No hand sanitizer
No food
No work
McConnell, Kavanaugh and Pence
Are in first class
Getting foot rubs
By underage interns
Saturated in olive oil
And Trump is in the tower, on the mike
Talking about how great he is
And then suggests that it’s
Perfectly safe
To open the hatch
And re-enter the world.

And then
My eyes open at the
Speed of a whack-a-mole
And I look like the close up
Of The Madness of King George Bailey when
Nothing in
Pottersville makes any sense.

The world comes into
Half focus
And the
all the news
That gives us fits
Of Good Mourning America
Offers up flop sweat
Scenarios that
Are identical to my rust pipe
night time dreams.

My inner voices
Which are just the faint
Echo of my long ago
Once upon a time parents
Kick in with their songs of
Everything’s going to be okay
Optimism
Which we had no choice but to
Believe in as
Deeply as Elijah
Or Jesus.

I stop at the service station
To fill my engine
At the adrenaline pumps
To join David Byrne on the
Road to Nowhere
And then
spend the day
Moving like Pac Man
Frantically
Fearfully
Going up
Going down
Going left
Going right
Gobbling dots
Banging into walls
Muting Trump
Watching the mortality numbers
Change like
MacDonalds in hell
Reading stories of
Suffering
Or warnings about how much
Worse the disease is
Than we understood yesterday

I sneeze and briefly think
That I’m going to die

And then I decide to rescue myself
Like the divers who ultimately saved
The cave boys of Thailand
By writing.

Even though it feels dangerous
And threatening
And potentially useless
I know that you can trick your
Brain into feeling good
By laughing
Or smiling

So
I keep surface diving
Until I hit bottom
Which is the top
Of my creativity.

Eventually I find one
Trapped feeling
After another
And together we
Swim to the top

And that’s when I
try to Gepetto cobble
Something beautiful out
Of invisible wood
With the faint hope that I can
make the anonymous
Anyone
Feel as deeply as I do
At the moment.

Hours later
I am simply out of gas which is why
They call it exhaust

And so

I Tito
I CBD.
I take a sleeping pill
And try to avoid my dreams
Like
A running back
So I can
At the very least
See the
Goalpost
In the far
Far
Far
Faraway
Fog.

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