8.14.17

These days everything’s in excess, I

run until I puke,

read until I sleep,

eat until it hurts,

drink until honest,

talk until I’m told not to,

sleep until it’s over,

and yet actions of substance

atrophy while I’m not doing them,

avoidance an artful turn of the soul,

and vice the predominant lust

of my attention.

Still–

Dreaming factors into none of this;

What action is a dream? What sin a string

of fantasies? I will share one with you:

I dreamt last night I was a peasant

living in the year 13, rolling my body

in the mud of a luxurious castle courtyard,

while the gentry watched and laughed and

said, “That fool, what a graceless mutt, swine

incarnate–but what fantastic entertainment!”

And I lay in the mud, hearing, not caring,

staring up at a sky a shade of extinct blue,

a shade of joy and simplicity that died-out

with time. The others did not know

what I knew; that’s what made them invincible.

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Written at 10:26 at night, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA.