i feel like i'm dreaming
all the time

like somebody took it upon themselves to throw words at a wall
and turned what stuck into doo-*** scatting nonsense
which was then assembled gracelessly into a scathing neologism
something that scrambles into some semblance of an inner monologue and circles my tongue like treacle or a lab rat's ****

and if this is the scattered fantasy that my brain cells have scraped together from that primordial soup
then i don't think i want to wake up and see the aftermath of what feels like an eternal loop

but it's so scary to live life like a browning dulux colour swatch
businessperson's rolex watch
vignettes of vague consciousness vitally percieved through a time machine of moments and a swelling kind of grief grieved
for the moments inbetween that are lost and i'm pristine in an ocean of dark marine wondering where in my head my emotions and i have been

i can't ******* remember what i had for breakfast but i can recall that i feel like i've come last
in some kind of riddle where the clues are in a language i don't speak but could read with practice and anguish and the rhyming becoming more linear and fluent but i wish i could tell you what i said's congruent
to this fairytale drowsing that makes me feel alone and i think therefore i'm in a state to atone

i can't wake up
i'm going to throw up
similarly i think that i don't want to show up
tomorrow
i'll see you when i'm better or better yet never but it won't last forever
right?

it's a dark room, it's an odd feeling,
it's a thickening soup and it leaves me reeling
from the way these things are and how they won't be again, or maybe they have and i've just forgotten

the lights have gone out and the strings have been cut, i don't like the alarms and my torch has been put
on the tall mantelpiece where it lights up the sofa, shining right in my eyes which might be what i go for

i'm lying on the duvet with my old headphones on, and beach walk drowns out the blaring that drones on
mouth full of sickly christmas chocolatey sweetness, i wonder if the town in the distance can see us

and of course they can't because the lights are not here, and i'm laying on my side so down drips a tear
i don't think i'm sad, it's just liquid fatigue, but suddenly that window view seems like it's leagues

away from this moment, where my new braces chafe, but i'm still eating chocolate and i know that i'm safe
and this wild friendly cocktail of happy tired pain, it dissipates and escapes as the lights turn on again

the little ones cheer and the weird spell is broken, but it's been like two hours and i feel like i've woken
from a dream where my mouth aches but still tastes like sugar, where i've left my own village staring wetly at another

when i'm feeling sick, i like to imagine.
that my body is the stage of an epic,
a critically-acclaimed netflix original wherein i am irrelevant to the outcome except in my crests and furrows and forests and plains. there is a beginning and a middle and an end made all the more satisfying by their inevitability. and that's just the flu.

i like to pretend that there's a reason. that there exists a narrative, some deeper statement held in contempt of a stone-faced court, a message that cannot ever be parsed in a language that could explain why i feel this way. or better yet, a comforting draped tapestry that replaces self-awareness with april showers steaming on a fevered forehead.

sometimes i'll think on it as i rest.
hacking up sandpaper diatribes and existing in that terrifying state of circadian purgatory that stretches every dimly-lit hour into a week of retching, violently exoteric solitude. i have a string of fairy lights painstakingly arranged across my wall, and focusing on their pretty bouncing motion drains me of ambition and fear until all that is left is the quiet embrace of constant but minor pain.

occasionally i think too ******* this.
then it's back from the battleground to the main event, a swelling dramedy of good versus evil because never could my ego be satisfied with the illogical attack of an organism that neither discriminates nor appreciates my tirades. there has to be a reason, karma or a deity or the whim of the universe that picked out me to feel so awful. i can't bear being anything except perhaps the protagonist in a cautionary comedy,
as the slapstick laugh track bites back as my joke and i fall flat on our jaded backs
and feel forsaken for the sake of
a fever that'll leave in a week
leaving me weak and

honestly? it's just really sweaty.
i'm baking. it feels like every bone and orifice in my body is aching. but that wouldn't make for the most entertaining diagnosis, now would it?

perhaps it is quite simple
the reasoning behind
"man's best friend"

for what more could a man wish for
than that everlasting loyalty
that unspoken promise?

weather the storms it will
listen to silence it can
jump over the void it would

and the simple, childish glee
those widening eyes share
is perhaps the worst

because it is what we left behind
in and by embracing knowledge
we forget how to know

"grow up," we snarl over to the dumbstruck child
who lives in the moment
careless and yet carefree

and it is entirely possible
that both words exist for a reason
for without one we are not human

without the other
we would break
and lose man's best friend