The Plight of Life

On those days I can’t get out of bed,

The heater is off in the house.

The warm cocoon called my blanket holds me in a protected shelter,

            tempting me into a timeless zone of sleep.

Once I fold back these covers of safe haven,

I relinquish my soul to the unpredictability of this world once again;

And every ounce of control I have drips out of me as rapidly as

the droplets of rain on a stormy spring night,

loudly announcing their existence before silently disappearing without a trace into the grass.

Life gets in the way.

On those days I can’t get out of bed,

I mutilate the evil alarm clock, nailing the innocent silver buttons of “snooze” or “off”

            with a hammer made up of the pads of my fingers;

And I am stuck in the grooves of a record on a phonograph, spinning again and again

without a person to pick me up, salvage me from this ongoing nightmare of reality, and

restore me.

Life gets in the way.

On those days I can’t get out of bed,

I hear a crackle from somewhere inside my body, a precursor to “something wicked this way comes.”

Pain shoots up to my brain in so many watts of electricity that fries all my circuits,

My poor neck;

And I grasp the bedsheets that fasten me in a thrilling roller-coaster of fantasy and dream and

Release a deep groan that embodies my frustrations in a metamorphosis from thought to sound.

Life gets in the way.

On those days I can’t get out of bed,

I finally get out of bed.

And I want to share a passion, I want to have a passion,

But I am just so unhappy.

Why am I so damn unhappy?

It’s because life is the deep end of a swimming pool,

            not that “no diving: 5 ft.” shit, but the full “beware: 11 ft. or over”

            and I am barely treading the surface.

It’s because life is the impasse in a never-ending concrete labyrinth of complexity

            and the only dynamite I can use is the explosive power of my mind.

Life wants you to fight it.