I bet you never got to know
That I wasn't always depressed
I was always narcoleptic

Every time I told you I didn't feel good and couldn't see you
I wasn't depressed
I was narcoleptic

That message in March
Where you said you even loved when I was so depressed I couldn't get out of bed
I was narcoleptic

I couldn't help it
People never understand, it's like how you feel when you've been up for days
I was narcoleptic

I could sleep 12 hours
And not feel refreshed, because my sleep doesn't heal me, like it heals you and others
I was narcoleptic

I know I took those stimulants
But they made me edgy and nervous, and I turned into a ****, so I didn't take them but
I was narcoleptic

You see, those stimulants, Vyvanse
Made me feel like I'd been up for days but running on 2 pots of coffee because
I was narcoleptic

A man who has been up for days
Is not often the most polite and I hated being impolite so I stopped taking them but
I was narcoleptic

So I spent my days sleeping
Sleeping till noon, then needing to sleep at 3 PM, until 10 at night and then until noon because
I was narcoleptic

Your stepdad said he wouldn't stand for that "crap"
But I couldn't help it, I wanted to see you more than anything and I knew it hurt you but
I was narcoleptic

Not only am I narcoleptic
I think I have fibromyalgia just like my grandmother, who loves you too, I think,
I have fibromyalgia.

Today I'm still narcoleptic with fibromyalgia
But I've found a cure, a mix of two pills, one for the narcolepsy and one for the pain
One pill is designed for nothing but narcolepsy (not ADHD) and the other a narcotic for the pain
You'd have no idea how much better I feel than I did before
You'd have no idea because you don't care to learn who I am
Because I'm not who I was, I'm refreshed, something new, I'm normal for once
Not just feeling bad, not just tired and sore and fatigued, not so depressed I can't get out of bed

Just narcolepsy and fibromyalgia.

You know, I never met a Frank I really hated too much,
except for when I was little and I despised
my ******* grandfather for threatening to
nail my ears to a door every forty minutes.
Having said that, there's a hole somewhere where
people vacation from life and I haven't found it,
but the closest I can get is bed.
I woke up with half my *** still asleep.
I hurt somewhere new every day.
But hey, it can't all be **** coffee and half wilted daisies, eh?
I got my copy of "Eaten by Machines; Collected Poems of Austin Heath."
Look at that.
My word in print.
I'm not making a **** cent off of it,
but there it is. I'll call myself a writer now.
At least out in the open.
Among people.
Sigh.
What if further on down the century,
people decide these years were the first
seeds pushed into the dirt that would
start the apocalypse?
Or, what if we are already the post-apocalypse?
This place smells funny.
What if the past heard about the future,
learned about all the wealth and resources we had
at our disposal, and instead built fancier weapons
for the war machine?
Would they even hesitate to call us monsters,
and declare the future the end?
What the **** do you think we're looking down?
We're all going to go insane,
and **** each other in our sleep,
and we'll sleep rarely because we
realize that it is one big
unprofitable blind spot.
We'll die half-narcoleptic, insomniac, lucid dreaming lunatics,
with manic paranoia and no conscience for violence.
In our sleep.
Sleep.
I can't quite remember why I left bed,
I guess I needed more sunshine in my diet.
My phone is off, it's past noon, and I haven't eaten.
Frank is disappointed.

Sleep brings no rest:
When one dreams only
In lucidity,
It turns reality
Into unimaginable chaos.

I haven’t written anything in a long long long time.

I feel so old.  I feel like an old woman whenever im crashing. Or thinking, actually.

I don’t even know where to begin.

i haven’t even written anything yet and my eyes are welling up.  Its so ******* hard, everything is so ******* hard.

I remember when I wrote that speed makes everything easy.  And it does, but only for a little while.   Now, everything is broken.  Nothing feels right.  Actually, nothing feels like anything anymore.

Now, I need it.  So. *******. Badly.

24 hours.  Exactly 24 hours.  That’s when the withdrawals start every single time.  Sometimes I’ll withdraw by accident.  I’m so caught up in my life I forget that I’m a sorry ******* speed freak, I’ll forget I’m an addict.  I’ll forget I’m a low-life pill head and I won’t feed the growing monster inside me.  But it doesn’t give up that easily.

I’ll feel it in my head.  It starts with this blossoming pressure headache, right between my eyes, on that bone between my eyebrows.  It feels hot, stabbing, relentless, constant.  It feels like my skull is bleeding.  I can’t see, I can’t look at light.  I wear dark glasses to hide my eyes, haunted by demons and ***** chemical desires.  My limbs shake, my head spins, I feel like I’m about to pass out, throw up, not really sure, maybe even ******* die.

But they have pills to fix headaches.  Excedrin became my best friend.  

Then started the manic depression.  Unpredictable, wild bi-polar mood swings that drove me insane.  I got so low once, I didn’t leave my bed for 36 hours.  Didn’t brush my hair, my teeth, nothing.  Just lay there crying.  Cried about the life I was ruining, my beautiful family I was letting down, the friends I couldn’t bare to see anymore.  I was so emotionally fragile, one wrong comment and I burst into tears.  I felt lost, I felt alone, somewhere dark, deep, deep down in a cold well by myself, shivering, afraid.  But I didn’t know how to word it, I only knew how to cry.  

My only escape was sleep.  Until it wasn’t.  Speed was greedy, it took that from me.

I started having crazy narcoleptic sleep-paralysis night terror episodes.  I can only describe them as slightly schizophrenic.  I wouldn’t remember falling asleep, and something normal would happen.  I’d be sitting in my bed, and then I’d fall and slam my face in a floor full of glass.  I would try and move, but I would be paralyzed.  Then I’d blink and I’d be awake, confused, as to what was happening to my sanity.  Dreams and reality cross, and I cannot longer differentiate between the real world and my imagination, ridden with monsters.  I started to hallucinate, spiders coming to get me.  I’d sob because suddenly I had nowhere to run to, I was no longer safe even in my dreams.  I am a slave to my poisoned mind.  The lack of sleep made me further depressed, dangerously suicidal.  When I slept, I would sob and yell out horrible things.  I’d cry and say I wished I would die.

I’m too sad to eat, too diseased to sleep.  I have no motivation in my life anymore to do anything.  My problem ruined my life.

I never feel happy anymore.  Now I yearn to just feel normal, or at least rid enough depression to not be suicidal.  And I miss feeling happy.  I used to be so ******* happy, and I abused it.  I took advantage of my gushing dopamine, never imagined a life without it.  I never thought one day I would need a substance to feel “okay”.  

The only thing that makes me happy now is a lot and lot and lot of speed.  But I know it’s only temporary, and only further buries me in this awful cold place I inhabit now.  

No one can help me, there is no comfort, no warmth, nothing that makes me feel less isolated, less ****** up.  I am ashamed.  I hide from the people I love, and cry from homesickness and loneliness.  But I can’t let them see what I did to myself.  Even now my fingers shake from the tears I’m fighting back as I think about my triplets, my little brothers, my kitten, my best friends, all so far away in the past, in beautiful sunny memories I keep tucked away in notebooks and pictures.  I think about my grandma, my mom, my godmother, and I whimper in shame.  I miss them all so much. I just want to go back and fix everything, but I can’t.

I can’t tell them.  They wouldn’t understand.  They would hate me, disown me, never speak to me again.  I’m so delicate right now, that rejection would push me over the edge, finally **** me.  I’d rather have them all think I’m a selfish, lazy idiot than a drug addict.  

It all just makes me cry.  I’m so lost in this awful mess.  So alone.  I miss my old life, I just want to reverse it.  But its not that easy.  

Why is it that after all this, I sit here now, fighting the urge to put another pill up my nose? WHAT THE **** IS WRONG WITH ME?

Why do I still want them? WHY? It is 2 in the ******* morning, why can’t I just come down and stay there?

I guess I’m scared. Scared to face what I have to.  Negative emotions, withdrawals, the inevitable.

But why must I binge? Why can’t I regulate? I guess that’s the definition of an addiction, a lack of self control.
Ah, the inner turmoil, the war raging inside me is slowly destroying me.

I can’t stand it. I’m sure soon I will die.

Thou shalt follow me,
Be with me 'til eternity,
Turn into someone I want you to be,
With my decree thou shalt obey me 

Thou shalt be envious,
Like a culprit get what you want to use,
Live with thy desire,
Happiness of others you should acquire

Thou shalt be gluttonous,
Like a pig go and be voracious,
Satisfy your hunger and rapturous cravings,
Drinking and eating what you want is never sating

Thou shalt live with lust,
Like a tigress in bed you must,
Embrace the desire you have within,
Coquettishly caress and savour someone's skin

Thou shalt be wrathful,
Like darkness let it manifest your soul,
Hatred shalt flow violently in your blood,
With thy anger sins shalt flood,

Thou shalt live with thy pride,
Never ever let thyself subside,
Walk with your pretty cruel soul conceited,
Shalt not let thyself be defeated

Thou shalt be greedy,
Like me love thy life acquisitively,
Have the excessive desire to take what you don't need,
Earn what you want no matter if you exceed

Thou shalt live like a sloth,
Do nothing just lay at your couch,
Survive like a narcoleptic man,
Just sit down and hope that something will be done

you will fade away
you will fade like the others
did too
you will fade, my SOS
and leave me with this island's truth on solitude

i rode as passenger once
in a boy's car
i had named Bessie
Bessie grunted and took naps
like a narcoleptic
we drove together
me and this green-eyed boy
in ol' Bessie
through the construction of the Yards in the summer
with our windows
rolled down
smoking cigarettes
under overpasses
on a highway bridge
the city swelling, heaving
over us
and the wild winds
splashing my face
hair tantalizing
impatiently over to his side,
my downtown apartment waiting like a desert flower at dusk
throbbing to bloom
David Bowie sang heroes and i believed the song
could never mean anything more
than our moment shared

years pass and summer nights choke me again
i'm in love again

thundershowers knock on my window
David Bowie sings
but i don't think of that green-eyed boy anymore
now, it's you
tall, spectacular man
spritzer of mystery magic from your hands
i think of you
but i'm alone in my apartment this time
i climb out of the fire escape
thunder cracks the sky
and i let the rain soak my bones
i want to hold you, but
you will not have me
completely
like how this storm
is finding
its way to the last inch of me

i close my eyes and
give
myself away


you won't be the last of them
i know
my story of heroes and lovers sits on the doorstep
of a vacant home

you won't be the last of them
i only dreamed you would
like the sight of a ship too far from shore

short-handed love letters
written in the daydreams of a deliberate narcoleptic.

i send you the paper plane promises of summer
(sealed tightly in sweaty palmed envelopes)

you're not one to read poetry
yet i always manage to find feather light stanzas draped across your shoulders
held down by nothing more
than freckled thumbtacks

years fall away
like too heavy eyelashes onto cheeks

waiting to be brushed away
by the callused fingers of patient lovers

our slow and natural tendencies
our lips mimic the rate of gravity

you use a box cutter to lengthen the creases in my palm

but borrowed time
and fickle fate
will never heal heartbreak

x

Narcissistic -
Empathetic;
Automatic
Narcoleptic:

To the dreamers
Divine deceivers
A Sublime message,
The faith's receiver'
Understanding lonesome
Psychic sleepers;
The Destroyers'
Disguised Defeater.

Naturalistic,
Apathetic -
Neolithic?
Unrealistic.

x

You control my thoughts, but it's not like I would change them,
You're always in my dreams, and I'd do anything to save them.
Feels like I hit the pavement, I'm a *******,
Because they hurt me so, yet the pain is such a bliss.
If dreaming of you always hurts, I'll readily accept it.
If it was up to me, then I'd be a narcoleptic.