"narcoleptic" poems
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.
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 2:29 PM UTC
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.
Jun 14, 2014
Jun 14, 2014 at 1:12 PM UTC
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
Sep 27, 2017
Sep 27, 2017 at 9:50 AM UTC
My tears are--
Narcoleptic diagonals
Collapsing forward-
Motion into neurons-
Bound-by-arteries
Instead of gravity.
They find construct,
By fluorine cyclamen
And wildebeest chantries.
But to understand
Is-bygone-remorse
Made of much more
Than clovers stitches.
Needling skin into bone.
Thoughts from flesh.
Dec 30, 2014
Dec 30, 2014 at 2:47 PM UTC
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
Jun 16, 2023
Jun 16, 2023 at 10:48 AM UTC
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
Jun 21, 2015
Jun 21, 2015 at 9:48 PM UTC
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
Nov 13, 2012
Nov 13, 2012 at 4:00 AM UTC
A deluge of earthly sins,
A waterspout on green leaves,
A hurricane among lull seas,
An equanimity of autumnal eves.
A dilated tale of mundane me.
A million abstruse blocks of C of Co²
A walker among you and me.
A wanderer lost in blue.
Attired by crimson lust of artistry.
A masquerade brew of red wine and dark coffee,
A stark blithe of sanguine comatose,
All drunk and clinging to the thin threads of this unstaged life,
All murdered by the sinical overdose.
The seascape choirs of ocean waves,
Embracing the narcoleptic yellow shorelines,
And evanescent castles
And sail headwind with a mystical concubine.
The iced conundrums of this lost forsaken echoes of winter breeze,
The insanity measured in ones & zeroes,
We're the kings of this deadbeat time,
And praised victories of unsung heroes.
The wanderlust sailors drank the skies,
In mixed cocktails,
And thy heavens sang to this night,
As a melodic madness of wild gales.
Her pale white body declares some love due,
As our lips bled rapture,
And rose a melodramatic cue,
Like words of a closing chapter.
Charged with the flow of adrenal enzymes,
A surrogate from affinity to serendipity,
For in flashback of these forlorn events,
I write this epiphany.
And though these letters are on fire,
And bestowed the bullets over armored heart,
For life exists in the heartache symphonies,
Like a stratagem cliché of painted art.
Call your unfurled knots of wrecked sanity.
A wildfire has gone wild within,
The eloquence thirst of your red lips,
Inked the words of love on this skin.
An audacious lover of seafaring,
Beside the starry onset of a beautiful dawn,
A tide of marvelous mystery,
Whose side are you on?
Its all fiction served with tea,
And through warm sips of this worthy minute,
Change is tempted to render seeds,
That swam through wind, till it escapes and wanders the infinite.
Jan 26, 2016
Jan 26, 2016 at 3:05 PM UTC
**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.**
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 4:52 PM UTC
Today, I am decrepit and
my body is not my friend.
My lungs are being unkind,
Squeezing, wheezing, teasing
With occasional, ecstatic gulps of air
It's not fair!
I am one huge ache,
I can barely stay awake.
Medicine rendering me narcoleptic,
pessimistic, antagonistic, unrealistic,
but I must still be mummy
Bathing spots, and finding dummy
I am wilting, like a week old rose,
Exhausted
(Off to wipe her nose)
Feb 23, 2014
Feb 23, 2014 at 8:07 AM UTC
“It’s time for bed,” was never a problem for me,
I was good at sleeping, I could do it longer than anyone else I knew and they
couldn’t wake me if they tried,
I was in over my ankles, waist, chest and head,
Five hundred pillows and a duvet that was heavy enough to suffocate all the
car horns in my mind,
I didn’t have to count the sheep so they sat there and ate grass,
Because I could pass with all the flying colours refracted in crystallised
dreams,
In the pitch black I won all the altercations against those demons that bite,
The narcoleptic warrior is champion of the night, the steady rise and fall of
her chest, the flutter of twitching lashes like spiders legs, arms drawn
tight around ******* and waist for protection against the ties that bind,
It’s a **** art,
But I didn’t realise my excellence was subjective,
For my parents it was the ****** in the night,
Fox screams that would send them running to my side, only to find a steady
heartbeat and lethargic child, head to the pillow and snoring,
For friends and family who came to stay, for them it was wide eyed, white
knuckled, lying awake and clutching the sheets as I cried and whimpered in
the next room,
Trauma spilling over catatonic lips in the most wretched of yelling, pulled
out in a long, choking strings of invisible nightmare,
For my sister, it was ***** ‘cow’, **** and all the other curses that
I kicked or hit her with in my minefield of a sleeping pattern,
Bible versus, bolt upright, head spinning 360 degrees,
Charon won’t let me pass because someone wasn’t kind enough to put a coin
in my mouth and now I’m walking a shore I won’t remember in the morning,
I don’t remember in the morning, I’ve been buried in sleep,
Not until I see them unshaven and weary at the table, and I know they’ve been
leaking electricity,
Is it possible to be good at something if no one thinks you are?
I was good at it, once,
In over my ankles, waist, chest and head,
Five hundred pillows and a duvet heavy enough to suffocate,
To suffocate my talent, I lie back and count to ten,
Sleep mask, sleep tablet, sleep therapy, I try not to let it happen again,
I keep the nightlight on now, the sun my only sleeping scar,
How can you be good at something if no one thinks you are?
I don’t think I’ll ever grow out of it, but I’ve stopped reaching for the
pin-pricks of white light in those starry night skies,
And now, when I lay awake in my bed, I’m afraid to close my eyes
Dec 20, 2014
Dec 20, 2014 at 3:07 PM UTC
recollecting collections projecting selections injecting protection infection dejection
dyslexic narcoleptic rejecting dejections ******** complexion complicating interjections
perplexed inspectors intercept pterodactyls relaxing in backpacks extracting disillusion
contortionist philanthropist dejected transgression implementing eradications of moss buying patrons
eclectic perfectionist rests limp-wristed whispering disparaging remarks to the wait staff
trombone percussionist impressed and impoverished gravelling wistfully mimicking Rickles
I sit half disheveled grinding my wisdom teeth feeling the fleeting muse sitting in disbelief –
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 12:21 PM UTC
The haggard lawn is tired of the long hot summer now September has arrived.
Its seedy moustache is no longer luxuriant, but wiry;
A snake-like thing that has ambitiously unfurled without the full quotient of chlorophyll.
It is time to offer the sward the privilege of a cut.
Man moves towards machine, assuming simplicity.
But mower is asleep and will not fire.
At first he tries the simple fixes; fuel is present, spark plugs in place.
But the horticultural haircut remains undone,
As the tease of utility leads him to try louder, less sensitive approaches.
Meanwhile, the rotary monster relishes its narcoleptic interlude,
And the grass grows on.
Sep 28, 2013
Sep 28, 2013 at 11:31 AM UTC
The sky was ablaze like glass in the church;
recumbent on stone floors / we had knocked out
the windows to let in only the blind light,
the blind arches that pointed heavenward, now yawning
narcoleptic houses of God grasping at sky and god
somehow / we captured daylight in our hands / we were
yearning for ourselves again between long hours of waiting
we believed in gods that breathed that great sky, we believed
in the breadth of cosmos more dazzling
than the church doors that we blew asunder
in that latter architecture where we decided the height
& breadth of the pillars in their proportions like
the proportions of man, exhausted & exaggerated,
man exalted, exaudi, exaudi, voca meam quam olim Abrahim
praises to all our lords on high, we sang in drunk
communion hailing, our communion with one another,
all of us there on the stone flags, hands in hands
we beat at the chests of each other, the eyes of each other
(we were just kids beating off to one thing or another)
and it was *** and chaos between those stone walls, it captured
us, bewildered us, those yawning heavens under the church ceiling,
the one that blazed with the dazzling color of windows
covered in dust like our skin the way it crept along the stone
and we craved it and the way that it seemed to creep,
the sky seemed to creep above us, seethed with light
some days we didn’t know which way was light, up
or lower down, it was usually easy to tell after you came
but we exhausted our voices, exaudi exaudi orationem meam
believing that something would hear us—we heard ourselves
more clearly in the throes of ****** nothing was more alive
more human, than anything, than anything that sang like that blazing
sky/ so we tossed ourselves forward into lightward, lightness
dazzling ourselves with light / it was the summer of everything closing /
the bewildering truth of our own god in cells and precious molecules
we made god in the throes of ****** worshipping in the dazzling sky
we had to propel ourselves forward, it was our stunning captivation
with that dazzling maze of flesh on the yearning sky, hands
searching inscrutably for hands, for god in the feverish sky, god
who doesn’t live in the sky, the god who climbs
with us, the god who screams in our ****** with us,
exaudi, exaudi, orationem meam, ad te omnes caro veniet…
Jan 8, 2012
Jan 8, 2012 at 11:46 AM UTC
Hey Guys
I'm way past half time
I passed
The great divide of 30
More than 20 years ago
I had like AIDS for decades
I'm a narcoleptic
And I have raving ADHD
So excuse me
Please
If I need one or two
PickMeUps
Before
Breakfast
Brunch
Lunch
Dinner and
Bedtime
Or a man
PickMeUp
From the
Dance floor
If I go night clubbing
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 4:50 PM UTC
Unfettered falsehoods that lure by practice of pretense
Make subject to a tyranny of questionable inquisitions
That claim themselves both by treaty and inheritance
Pursue with a vigor blind narcoleptic dancers with a ferocity
That embalms the bones with the tears of a million fans
Who in such tragedy represent that image and behold him
His limb freshly bleeding reading his words in lamentation
Jul 25, 2012
Jul 25, 2012 at 6:07 PM UTC
there are some folks living in my bathroom
from the in-between world
like a trailer park
for toilet home bodies
it is where some
of the the dead living habitate
gnomish broods who feed
on the mist of mold
and fecundating aberrations
of **** and excrement
where the difference
between objects and souls
blur
sinks and toilets
flapping opinionated vortexes
of gloom brooding
walls wave and warp
like angry water
and howling wind
they are living creatures
animated bodies electric
crying mouths
without breath
fierce undulations
animated denizens scowling
rattling like bricka bracka
used shaking chairs
always steaming
hysterical
daring you to fight them
sometimes between sleep and wake
i enter their dimension
unable to break free of my sleeping self
held down
paralytic
like a narcoleptic slug
inching its way
through a puddle of warm oatmeal
last night i found myself
in the in-between world
to discover some desperate hollow woman
barricading the bathroom
i pushed hard against the door
and heard her sonorous groan
as she collapsed
into thin air
i think i love her
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 5:16 PM UTC
the way i want you
so ethereal
i feel lighted as
we speak
my throat catches hard
my skin crawls; is gone
snare drum noses
in a cavity populated
with sugarbugs and
lightning rods
narcoleptic lips trace
arias of sand against
collarbones
my imagistic descent
into coral lined papers
inner tongue colors the
edges of our orchestra
our ballad of temperament
our skewed talents invoked
candelabra memoirs
a love of no soul in particular
Feb 9, 2015
Feb 9, 2015 at 9:41 AM UTC
Narcoleptic storyteller living the dream; it's a ******* nightmare.
Dark eclectic gory hell or giving up steam; watered luck is right there.
Appear today; drawn tomorrow
I could tell which words you borrow
Inconvenienced shades of gray
Eighty shades of sorrow weigh
today, which way to say,
I will stay here when you stray hear
they may play fear, bray they pay dear
Ever listen on to bold tomorrows.
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 5:01 AM UTC
They took me back to 1967
Where I was
A raging narcoleptic
& a traveling belly dancer
For the Indian circus
A closet anti-war revolutionist,
You met me
In the dust storm of the
Reenactment of
History in the making
I think at first I only
Liked you
Because we'd had the
Same dream
About elephants and
Talking stars
Could you have loved me then?
Dec 19, 2011
Dec 19, 2011 at 1:57 AM UTC
It is a sad, sad story
for the successes of the past do not fare to serve us in the present
the logic of the bully is a nationalist sigh of relief
and the arc of our world is divided by invisible lines that cross borders
but across which only poverty **** recorded and scored, shall pass
when the successful liar is preferred to the lonely sage
are we not prepared to accept that which we serve
are we not prepared to eat from the plate we have earned
to sup on anarchistic attitudes, imbibe narcoleptic morality
then purge our selective brutality on the servers
for we have earned this, that which fell into our laps
a modern life made tolerable by the indictments of demagogues
for freedom’s a blight in the nightmares of demagogues
shopkeepers made frightful by the incitement of demagogues
we don’t need rights when we’ve the rightness of demagogues
we know they are liars, but are they successful liars?
we know they start fires so they can be better seen
presiding over the funereal pyre of our former freedom
some bishop of hate and self-interest raised up by our fear
to a pulpit of nations drawn low by wage slavery
to a podium impatient for their arrogant knavery
to a rostrum of hatred unsated by gross economic products
to a minbar frustrated by allegations and false prophets
It is a sad, sad story
for our past failures, our careless disregard will not serve us in the present
the logic of the bully is the demagogues rise to belief
we are weakest only when we are weak
and no backs will lift this burden but our own
A sad story indeed
Jul 5, 2016
Jul 5, 2016 at 9:18 PM UTC
Cardboard etchings of black roses
Floating fish eyed weary in amongst the rot and ruined
Soft humming echos off filth-water calm surfaces
Mirror and smoke coalescing into desert mirage *******
Those words must be salvaged
Baiting me into lyrical euphoria
Sharp edges cutting deep into the leathery, narcoleptic hide of my soul
Easing warm and quiet into all of my dark, secret crevices
Anxious to keep them safe
The walls sag and teater on the brink of Titanic tragedy
Watching it sink I pull inside every memory
Every taste, touch, bite of young, untrained teeth
An empty space where just gray shades reigned
Now growing cardboard black roses
Apr 19, 2012
Apr 19, 2012 at 12:08 PM UTC
Sleep brings no rest:
When one dreams only
In lucidity,
It turns reality
Into unimaginable chaos.
Feb 23, 2013
Feb 23, 2013 at 2:49 PM UTC
Ketamine dreams,
induced narcoleptic nightmares,
poles of northern impulses,
and southern stupors.
My equator's equilibrium,
and my catatonic control,
each one in the same,
yet far from reach.
A squeeze of a lime,
its fresh sour scent,
atop three fingers of gin,
match the burn of my cuts,
and i feel once again.
Cocktail straws set aside,
stirring fingers dull discomfort after a lick,
"three more limes please, barkeep",
it's now triple the pain i seek,
tolerance & your fickle itch.
Mar 19, 2018
Mar 19, 2018 at 10:36 PM UTC