bad horoscope

i want my sleep back. last night, with living muck steadily climbing out of my bronchal tubes, settling somewhere south of my tongue, blocking my thoat... {<-- not a real sentence, unless i add the ellipses, which make it more or less simply vague...(raising the question, is "ellipses" singular or plural? ellipses are a good time, or, ellipses is a good time? an ellipses is ((ellipses are?)) more or less a group of three periods. is a group a they or an it? i guess it boils down to: is "ellipses" a term for three periods or, in the group, are each of the periods an "ellipse." you know what, the latter sounds better and therefore will be the usage in this essay)} admittedly, i wasnt really using it, but the swallowing reaction is more or less automatic. now, the frequency of this little ballad was alarming; with the cycle repeating itself more or less every time i could take a breath. to be sure there is something to be done about that? constriction: i was half asleep. or half awake i suppose, depending on your outlook on matters of life. there is a pitiful, mentally paralyzed stage stuck between entire consciousness and the reprieve of a deeper rest.

{christ this song hurts to listen to... brings back memories of a lot of tears}

usually this stage is associated with a discomfort of some kind, obviously, keeping you from gaining unconsciousness. i have had uncomfortable nights before, the sheets were wrong, i was too hot, whatever, where i lay there half-dreaming but unhappy because things weren't right. problem is, im just unconscious enough not to know what to do about it. this is a terrible thing, knowing something isnt right but not being capable enough to correct the problem. how many unhappy nights have i layed there, miserable, and simply took it? i remember last night, for an hour or so: dreaming, breathing, being annoyed that i had to swallow, swallowing, dreaming, breathing, being annoyed that i had to swallow, swallowing... etc. must be the life of a goldfish... except im pretty sure goldfish have fewer problems. besides, they wouldnt remember it in the morning, would they?

i always sort of thought i would be a writer someday. well not really. i mean it wouldnt be my main source of income, but i always thought i would. garp is a writer. apparently it isnt easy. i have also always {or for at least the last hour or three} wanted to own a house in some ancient european city. it seems like just the place to sit on a park bench or a downtown street corner and watch a tree, foreigners, or a quickly buzzing and sputtering austrian neon sign. it seems like, in those places, the words would come so much easier than here, at home, in a dark den with a bright tv showing the western conference basketball championship, laptop on... well, lap, headphones in... just sitting... i want to be the next kerouac. badly. i can feel him inside me. i mean, i suppose i will have to be jack on my days off from putting people to sleep but that shouldnt stop me, right? maybe theres a bit of hemingway tucked away too. maybe when i sail down to the keys, i will feel more like ernest. i will need a lot of six-toed cats and a used bar urinal but yeah, i could be ernest.

you know, maybe someday i will find my own thing. be it in vienna or key west or the subdivisions of faux-rural north carolina. i will sing to some small microphone some song that, maybe, i wrote. and in my own voice {although this sexy sick voice is pretty cool...} to boot. so far, however original i think i am sometimes, ive been living a life of covers. every real song i have ever played, written by someone else. every good thing ive ever written, usually while thinking of someone to emulate. i have this thing for originality that says: "unless you change something when you write it, it should stay as it is." makes writing poetry pretty difficult, when everything is a first-draft. so i dont know, maybe im just faking it. these couple paragraphs will never mean that much to anyone. no universal truths exposed. no particular entertainment value. i am pleased, however, that i dont particularly mind all the words that have come out so far. garp says his mother would read her autobiography and not enjoy what she was reading, even though she just wrote it. and thats the way it goes, a lot of the time, but tonight is a little better. its a little bit pleasing. and, after all, i can ease off that itch for productivity a little bit. check it out, i wrote some more. good for me.

night loves.