Medicine For a Nightmare

Without the aid of drugs or making the eyes tired I’m kept awake by constant noise in my brain - like an echo chamber – voices of a million ideas and people from throughout the day still talking to me – memories from six years ago – conversations from last week – lines from movies I hated – women from thirty-six years ago complaining about how cold it is – standing around outside waiting to see something more exciting on the dry pavement – flat worn down cigarette butts – pebbles – plastic bottle caps – pebbles – sand – footprints – everything a cold grey color – they all stare at their feet when they talk to me – warm green eyes – warm hazel eyes – warm blue eyes – dark brown eyes that are truly the only ones I want staring at me – I can’t even look her in the eye without trembling – she is the one I would stop listening to music for – she can crush me in a second with her smile – I can’t ever – I will never know what this is about – drifting further away is going to make it all better maybe – I can make them all laugh – I can piss them off to no end – wide awake late into the night though – wondering who even gives a shit – wondering if any of them ever think of me anymore – I think of them all now – this last time though – I never felt stronger – left to feel weak and guilty like I did wrong – the echoes as I try to sleep – I wonder how drugs might help again – I hear voices and laughter – voices of people I haven’t met yet – voices of the last thirty women I wanted to fuck the shit out of – voices of the ones who are of no consequence anymore – when I am far away from here – sitting on a bench looking over the night peppered with orange freckles – a valley of dreams and where I always wanted to die – long boulevards of strangers and friends and hey look it’s open all night – like a grid – I stood up there in September one night – the beginning of what I thought was the best story I could ever write – medicine for a nightmare – a cure for an ailment that never existed in the first place – back and forth and back and forth and back and forth – whatever the case – anyone who tries to judge me now – the fire and energy from a trillion suns on everyone they’ve ever loved – I spend nights listening to nobody – an empty head full of ideas I can’t hear because of all this other static – when I get to an nice open space though – when high above me a black ceiling with billions of stars confusing me and my eyes – relaxing my eyes and pointing me in the desired direction – when I am there I’ll know I’m finally on my way home – these days silence only happens for five minutes at a time – I can’t spend another grey season in this echo chamber – the sound of a distant signal high upon a mountain lulling me to sleep – remember that?