This appears in a pre-2010 issue
of Down in the Dirt magazine.
Saddle-stitched issues are no longer
printed, but you can requesting it
“re-released” through amazon sale
as a 6" x 9" ISBN# book! Email us for re-release to order.
If sleep could be injected
into my veins in a milky silver
elixir of hyper-meditative energy,
then I would never have to
wake up from the
lucid dreaming of life again.
My blood feels old and swampy
and languorous in my veins.
The day has darkened and
the half-hearted morning has
already committed suicide.
I am at a loss for words; my
tongue is made of glass.
Somebody should be kissing my
wounds softly, or embracing all
of it with me, helping me swallow
shadows and drink gloomy whiskey.
It takes time to reassemble a
lacerated self-image; that, and lots
of alcohol. And insomnia, in quantities
deemed comical. Maybe a month of no
sleeping would do. Asceticism and self
purification at its holiest. I want nirvana,
I want inebriation, I want the kind of
sweet numbness that makes
your teeth almost buzz and tremor.
Don’t tell me about recovery, because
between this second and the eventual rippling
of a brown scab lies an infinite blue
ocean of time and clarity-laden pain.