ManicWorld Magazine

     Looking haunted in the mirror and fearing the expanse of sleep
The visions and the headaches and the nauseating colors 
An unrecognizable voice parts unrecognizable lips
     And the sound is low and guttural.

     I think everyone hears me shaking in the cage
Trapped in these half awake dreams
     Backed up to a precipitous ledge.
     Gravity is all nonsense in sleep paralysis.

     And I’m not familiar with the name on the pill bottles.

     But I could be anybody
Maybe this is a diabolical cabal
Psych ward luxury leaves me confused and frightened
     And I’m left to dispute the bill with a faceless ghost.

     This medicine is supposed to suppress nightmares 
But as any nameless villain knows, it overstimulates the senses
Another victim of the modern age
     And I don’t know if my eyes are open or closed.

     And I don’t know if my eyes are open or closed.
The sedatives will have their way
Cold and dark and I shiver beneath weighted blankets
     A name, spectral and hollow, echoing down endless corridors.

     Sleep is the enemy and I never seem to fully awaken
Dragging an impossibly heavy chain
Through streets that lead away from a home that I don’t remember
     A foreign address
     A failed rescue attempt.

     Now is the time that all clocks dread
Clocks that jeer with grand contempt
I’m afraid of my own breath with these faulty lungs
Susceptible to suffocation 
     Choked by the deadly smoke of incendiary bombs and descending flares.

     If someone could just wake me at the top of every hour
If someone could just convince me that God has my best interest in mind
     Then I could slip away to that lonely place unencumbered.

     But so far this confused situation remains intact
My corpse walks these halls in purgatory 
It’s been over a year now
     And I still find no comfort in my name.