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.

“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-****** of white light in those starry night skies,
And now, when I lay awake in my bed, I’m afraid to close my eyes

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.

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 –

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

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…

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

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.

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

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

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.

his love of mac n' cheese
often outweighs the capacity
of his seven year old stomach
but valiantly he labours
so his love  is not lost
his belly becomes drumlike
and his visage narcoleptic
as he falls into slumber
one hand clutching the fork
the other curled protectively
around the bowl, with still
at least a third of his *****
gleaming in a viscous mountain
of golden sunshine goodness...
cooling rapidly to a solid mass
but still when we try to remove
his now completely sombulant body
he clutches his golden *****
to his chest. like a pirate
in  the story's he has been told
unfotunately the result of
this myclonic clutch
is a gluggy macaroni mess
down his front and in his crutch

so now, we have no mac'n cheese
a grumpy pirate too sleepy/ cranky to please,
a running bath and washer too
and the devon rex cat,  no longer the blue
but the tuxedo black scoffing down cheesey glue,
from the floor ...
whilst the irritable pirate is crying (read bellowing)
for more

god give me strentgh.... to  just endure

i've never thought that i could be a good human being, never felt like one
is that true that sinners don't sleep at night? because i feel narcoleptic all the time
god please, forget my whole existence and toss me into oblivion

Feeling away my sight just fades
Thoughts overflow dream I am awake
I breathe and sleep and dream of me
Action I take hallucinate
Think of more sleep I just hate
Woke up after the fact am I late
Resume last night I just wait
Dream of my life flashbacks just play
Shapes and forms and sounds and more
Listen and see the world just formed
My brain makes a sight only I can see
I fall down rise up back to sleep
Wake, rise, sleep, and dream and repeat
I feel so trapped yet I feel so free
I feel scared post hallucination
I know it's my imagination
Yet I freak out like I am facin'
Death before my eyes
I rise back from my sleep
Then pass out cold or heat
Light or dark either way
Night I can't sleep late
Then I can't stay awake in the day
Aye
Aye

the gate locks behind us as we scuttleunder snowfall
bundled in peacoats and scarves
Coffee in our hands, so that they may not hold each other.
Gloves that hold no warmth, so we couldn't touch, in case we did.
We want to hold hands, but we're too happy with our coffee.
playing chicken, who's gonna be mentally stable first
driving cars at each other seeing who will turn.
but the roads long.
we pass open fields of ex-lovers
mountainsides of therapists
what started as a race, seems ike a leisurely scenic route now.
our white knuckles loosening,
Our manic tunnel vision, fading as we become narcoleptic
nodding off slightly as the cars pull closer.
Whenever we take our gloves off,
We'll be lucky not to have driven off road
collide with another field or mountain.
because we couldn't put down our coffee.
afraid of falling asleep
what if our eyes are closed, and we can't decide to be brave.
What if one day we made up in a hospital, in the same bed
two broken windshields.
Crashing, only when we fall asleep.
can we truly call it a conscious decision?

Stare at the wall
My head falls back
My mind goes blank
My mind goes black
My body goes limp
My ***** gets wet