Eyes Closed

I drive these streets with my eyes closed,

Driving by faith, not by sight.

I remember hearing something like that when I was a kid at church.

Some days I am asleep when I drive.

Some days I am only day-dreaming.

I sing while I sleep.

Bookmarks from the past blast through my speakers.

‘Sleep, perchance to dream,’ said the preacher.

. . . Wait, scratch that,

It was Billy Shakespeare who said it.

That dude said everything the bible didn’t, didn’t he?

I start my car in one spot of town,

and wake up at my destination.

It’s basically teleportation.

Traffic makes my eyelids fall.

All of those dashes and lines blur together.

The honks rock me back to sleep.

I stir.

I swerve.

I cross every line.

All while writing a story in my mind.

I am only a little drunk,

and just a smidgen high.

Don’t worry, though,

I’ve been down these same damn streets about a billion times;

they’re imprinted in me.

I pull over and scream.

This dream is stuck on repeat.

It’s the same damn cars,

on the same damn streets,

over and over again.

It loops and replays.

It’s hold on me feels infinite.

The green lights fade to red.

Years shrink into days.

The stop and go flow of the alive,

always in a hurry,

never having arrived.

It’s somewhere in between 

a nightmare and a dream.

. . . Whoa, this time I woke up in another state

How strange.

CH 4/19/26