Please don’t wake me. I’ll get up myself, I promise I will. Let me lie, if only for a minute more.
Our bodies can postpone falling ill. I haven’t been myself, but now later is here and here to stay and so am I. Hands on my head, I hit my head again, but won’t do it again. I promise I won’t, promise. I’ll be good. I swear I didn’t do it on purpose, I swear. I’ve got the spins, it’s turning me right around.
No more tending to flowers, no more maybe laters, only sleep. Can’t fall down lying down. I’m so heavy. Half life, half . . . what? I’m due for some time off, feel about ready to be held, held back. Meddler, do you hear me? Fix me into time. Are you there? I only want to see myself in old pictures from now on. Are you getting any of this? Come get me, come save me.
I’m trying to interface with ghosts, someone from long ago, an imaginary friend from back home. Says hey you don’t belong here, to which I say I know, but can’t look in the eye. You know me well. Yes, I know you well. I forget you know me better than I’d like. Too close for comfort? Sadly only happy to see you through my teeth. Shame, it’s wrong, it’s not fair, I’m wrong, but I can’t help it. Shame. Pretending not to hear won’t make me go away, or you. No, it’s not you. It’s just that I can’t stand anything, everyone’s a thorn in my eye. But you’d never turn your back on me, I know that. You can’t, not really. And me, I simply won’t turn mine on you.
But things too real, too much truth, hurts too much too. So sometimes I just wish someone new would come and take me far away from here. From this, from you, from me. To offer me a better lie. I can be the one to turn if you want me to be.
I don’t even really know what it is that I want from you. That’s why I keep you close, or you me for my sake. At arm’s length, just in or out of reach. In the twinkling of an eye. It wasn’t such a long way down. Life isn’t long. Are you in a hurry or something? No, no, of course not. I apologise, but of course I’m not really sorry. You never are.
When I don’t want to lie, I’ll shut my mouth, but that doesn’t mean I’m listening. I run my thumb over my keys trying to find the one I will soon need. I can't see a thing, already somewhere else in my mind.
People can’t appreciate when you try to teach them how to fish for themselves. After all, who are you to teach me? You’re no better. You’re only here because I need you to be, and what does that say about me? Who am I to teach anyone a lesson? I want to hide my hand, cheat to get ahead. Not a day’s wage earned if it were left up to me. I’d will my whims into existence, smuggle them into being.
What’s even there to learn? Nobody ever hears anything and we all believe each other.
You want to ensnare me in your words, even though they’re really mine. For your lies to run wild, the lies I attribute to you. You just have to see it and know what you’re seeing, but I don’t want anyone but me to know what they’re seeing. Let others draw the wrong conclusion, learn the wrong lesson, or wrong, right, wrong, whatever. Or perhaps by some luck even learn something truly new out of the endless repetition of these sequinned fever dreams.
This is all so unreal, but then again, I’m not real. I can’t hear anything, don’t know anything, won’t tell anything to anyone like I’ve burnt my tongue. Words can describe, but I’d need someone else to take my place like the prophet. But they’re not coming to me now, not the right ones anyway.
Right or wrong, as if. As if getting caught on the door closing behind you. It’s the song stuck in my head. There is no catharsis, no ending to this story, like there’s something I refuse to say, admit. As if locking my mouth and swallowing the key. As if it were possible, at my convenience, whenever I want, on a plate in perpetuity.
Or if I can’t hide in my own subterfuge, I suppose I’ll have to let the devil in, let the spirit eat my body and soul again. It’s the cost of living, isn’t it? I ought to bribe myself, but leave a paper trail. Spread the word, let the world in on my dealings. Have it black on white, as to have something for me to point at in derision.
Blackmail myself, but of course only for appearances. It’s simply the order of things, the paperwork you can’t avoid, as if. It can only ever be skin-deep. And then you still have to get it to the right place at the right time, or else, but they never tell you where that is, or what else is. I thought I knew the way, but I was mistaken. Always wrong, been wrong all along looking back, all this time. It is what it should be or has to be and no other way, not ever, not a doubt in my mind.
I’m barrelling down my fate’s empty hallways. Open doors by pulling hairs from my head. One by one and stick them like keys. Stick it in the back of my throat, for a cough. It echoes, tells it back to me the way I like it and rings hollow like the words. Stick it up my nose and sneeze for a blessing I didn’t earn, a curse in a pretty bow. Blow on it like an eyelash and wish for all I want, watch it disappear and never see it again. Never think about it again.
Nothing new, I forget things all the time. I let things turn to dust in my palms, in my claw-like hands. I’m an old man who took to song only since he began losing his hearing. I’m the laughing man, who only laughs now because otherwise it will be too late. The man who laughs through his tears and teeth, a locked-up jaw. Cinched tightly, the mouth bunched up into a grimace. You might ask me why I’m smiling, but I’m not. You’d be wrong. Or.
Forget it. The good is the bad. Yes, I’m sure it is, it has to be. But I’m tired of using my good judgment. Good. Right. It can’t be up to me anymore. I don’t want to learn. I’ll let you run the show if you’d like. Someone has to do it. I intend to take a step back. I want no part in it anymore. I resign from my post. I’ll trade being alive for surviving. It is the only way forward from here.
Are you saying that for me to hear?
Yes, hear me. I capitulate. I fear death, like a fool, like a sucker. That’s why I need you to come down to get me. Don’t you like winning? Come now. Cut me out from my place, stick me in a scrapbook, so I can be safe, there, forever.
Please hurry, I can almost hear the birds.