The Sleeping Man

By: Antwan Crump

 

It was June, I believe, on that fateful day when I took my long dive into nothingness. I hadn’t slept in a fortnight prior to that incessant snoring, but when I’d fallen, I can remember fellows and young ladies cascading merrily through the plains of a wonderous land; or maybe it was just a dream.

I’d been fraught with peril -as one could gather. Terrified by the ascending gloom that loomed within my path -I chose the everlasting road of misery via the stagnate route.

To dream is not to sin, so I slept. I slept away the indebted cries of those who’d owed me “not yet but later”. I slept away my creditors in kind -for whom that same excuse seemed insufficient. He still taxed -as I do; and as I do, it remains uncollected to our mutual despise.

I slept away the liars and cheats, the lovely woman with stardom upon her cheeks. I slept away the dreams I’d had, for while awoke we should not have them. I slept away the petty thoughts and their actions that worked in tandem. I slept it all away until no more could be asked than, “when shall he wake?”.

It worked. I say Eureka! To the stars who brought about the break. I took as much time as time allowed, then, even more, I dared not wake. A sleeping man’s a happy man, the tales are told -from here- until he stands, and I can’t tell what more I am than stoicism recompensed. A sleeping man’s a happy man. Don’t let them tell you different.

For when awoke the treachery befalls those with enough of a pulse to see insight. The world is older, and I, one step closer to being one with it. It isn’t a choice -not a single digit- on the calendar that’s used to track our demise. We wish for the skies but don’t know the true prize is the ability to reprise by a simple act of the eyes.

They close.

It all goes away. The reality that we fear may truly be the illusion, for in my dreams I suffer from no other than a perilous and unrelenting possibility of more. Limited only by the song of the alarm-

“Wake up!” -it beats.

“Wake up!” – it begs.

“Wake up!” – it cries.

For me to roll over and join the rat race of limitation that this nation may live long enough for more societal rats to run the wheel and scream “Freedom”.

Until the sun goes down and their freedom transforms those ‘free’ societal rats into societal norms, and down they go down the drain of expectation into a land where there is none. Only to wake again to the screaming of their fumbling lives.

Into the pot, they go! Melted in with every other flavor that was told it was special -now, “get back to work”.

These are of the many moments that I chose to sleep away in my full sized bed, with my half-lived life, and an empty mind, ready to take in what’s to come. But only when I dream. For dreams are the reality that seek you. They seek us. So drift,

drift.

drift..

Into the twilight and away with you.