I was so tired that I fell asleep with my jacket and jeans on
Fever spiked, woke up at 3 AM sharp
Drenched in a cold sweat and clammy to the touch
A night terror that returned me to childhood with its hallucinations
Starts with the distortion of size through warped dimensions
The knowledge required to become a skilled piano player
So vast that it expands and fills the room around me
I am crushed and suffocated, claustrophobic in the company of giants
My thoughts erupt
Someone saying something somewhere
Shaking, sweating
Even silence shouts at me I can’t control anything
I watch myself as I move in fast-forward, possessed
Voices in my head blast lunatic symphonies
Even the air around me swells to dangerous proportions
Can’t sit still, dying, I am alone and become a spirit
The physical realm long ago abandoned me on a stranger’s doorstep
Condemned to be a psychotic loner in a post-apocalyptic world
Dead and decayed from nuclear holocaust and I as its final freak
Beg for an end to the raving, burning, ringing and crushing forces
A phone call is made to my love and reality anchor
I stutter through my symptoms, regain some control
With her advice I find some calm and sleepwalk downstairs for water
The vending machine is deceased for the night
No favors
Just my luck

I am an incredibly wealthy man
I value each second, each thought and breath and beat
Well beyond any man-made measures
My brief years outweigh all currency of current economies
Interpretations can at times make me sublimate and evaporate
Occupy any two spaces as I see fit
Falling up and making fool of constant ‘c’ in practice
My sorrow has created a vast void
Which when reversed
Is towering
I am a pillar, an obelisk
Altitudinous shrine to my own embryonic ego
Somehow I will save the world
Yes, I am that naïve

Went to visit grandparents, decided I never want to be old
I have trouble keeping up as it is:
Technology is too fast paced
Phones are too small (and who needs one when they’re seven?)
Movies have too many explosions
All my music is from at least twenty years ago

While I’m planning my eternal youth I forget I take up space
I feel four hard smacks on the rear
Apparently I was blocking an elderly woman’s wheels
“Sorry for the love tap, you were in the way”
I wasn’t sure how to feel
A bit violated perhaps
It might have been, well, kind of nice
If she didn’t predate Christ

For lunch we sat with a kind couple
Marjorie and Phil
She wore all brown, with a necklace of whittled wooden giraffes
He was dressed like a lumberjack, pants mid-torso, flood-ready
We talked about a few things…
Mahler symphonies, Latin, obscure mountain villages
Both of them seemed perfectly content
You know, old age doesn’t seem so bad
As long as you have someone to share it with

I come-to from a nightmare, full of dark detail
But already slipping like sand through my hands
Walking down Charlotte street past stacked apartments
Shouts from afar past the rows of parked cars
A man whose face is now a blur makes me a promise
“*******, I’ll **** you”
Call the police, no answer, no help, no reassurance
Cut to a scene in an empty hallway, sensing his presence
My face is badly mangled and drips from lacerations

Fear and helplessness are real emotions
Even during REM cycles
I woke screaming and clutching my face
Still unsafe

When I was a kid, and my family would complete puzzles
Together
I always wanted to be the one to put the last piece in
Alone
So I would steal it, then hide it
And forget where it was
Making sure no one had the privilege
Including me

What
A little
*******

From the beach my group departs for a deep sea fishing excursion
Huddled in a fiberglass vessel known as the Barracuda
Captain Alberto is a burly man with dark skin and a silver tooth
Operating the motor is his young apprentice and amigo
The captain has his children’s names painted on the hull
One of them, Estrella, rings out in my mind
The boat rocks me nearly nauseous in the bobbing motions
My excitement builds as I photograph a variety of species
Fish would breach the surface, birds would swoop and dive
I even saw a whale
Distinguishable by tail
We slowed down for a better look at century-old tortugas
Circled round a mating pair, voyeurs to procreation
An engine boom and acceleration meant there was a bite
Alberto took the rod yet handed it to my party
The Mahi-Mahi swam and pulled with all its mortal strength
Its yellowish body shining and shimmering while it leapt
Our captain unsheathed an instrument for pulling the fish aboard
A candy cane shaped hook with a fine blade ending the curve
Impaled the marine dweller, pinned his body to the deck
It flopped about violently seeming to spill blood by the gallon
I found the creature’s face to be both hideous and handsome
A long bony bridge protruded from its forehead
Here, Alberto beat the beast to death with a wooden bat
It died with dignity
Fed a family
I thank the sea
For this gift

Paradise
Men falling from the sky using parachutes of peacock plumage hues
The professionals plummeting in perfect spirals
The novices sheepishly prolonging their gentle, gliding drop
The salmon shade adobe dwellings with their thatched, lovely roofs
Shelter me in their auspices from an unforgiving star
Handmade tiles of authentic design line each steep stone step
A covert staircase leading nowhere, we lounge near the pool by day
There I observe a couple through a sour tequila haze
A scarlet clad native and her sometime American lover
Their hands never leave each other’s guilty bodies, sexually charged
His absence of wedding ring betrays his intended affair
In the distance crushing waves claim territory on the shoreline
I underestimate; in a death roll I lose all sense of direction
The blushing sky with rosy smile watches over its children
A lighthouse by its lonesome guards the cliffs from clumsy ship
Locals sell their wares by approaching fair-skinned tourists
Necklaces of beads require long hours of work
Their labor goes unappreciated, sells for meager dollar
Popcorn man blows his lonely, dissonant horn forever
Into the deaf night