I've been having weird thoughts lately

racing thoughts racing through my brain 

on autopilot

thoughts that just won't stop

I see familiar faces but 

don't recognize them

strangers who look like longtime friends

places giving me déjà vu 

— awake and in dreams

it doesn't matter

I — I-I can't stop them; I can't 

they are E V E R Y W H E R E

Again, I awake from half-dreams

This body is never rested; 

For the moment I close my eyes

I'm living another life — lives —  

drifting 'til I land

never knowing who

or what might be waiting for me

on the Otherside

falling asleep to wake elsewhere

knowing only that life begins

when one body sleeps

and another wakes

in a world not of my choosing

but of my D E S I G N

Launching REM state… I N I T I A T E 

I ask myself: Which me am I now?

But before I can figure out

Oh — we're rolling. Lights, Camera, Action!

Until I find myself back here

trapped once more in this wretched body

That doesn't feel like it is mine

wrong gender, wrong face, wrong E V E R Y T H I N G

It's just so damn exhausting, I —

I want to go back, take me back.

Anywhere but here

lets me be myself

where the inside and outside match

where I feel like ME.

Regardless of situations

— bizarre — that I find myself in

all those many worlds

all those different selves

unapologetically

reflect my whole T R U T H

Never have I apologized

for simply being who I am

but this feels so wrong

jarring transitions

from one apt life to one so bleak

a laughable thing

that I should be subjected to

night after night, day after day

these violent wakenings

jostle me about

filling my psyche with weird thoughts

D R E A D F U L and C O N F U S E D

"Am I awake or am I not?"

I lie in bed, fearing the answer.

I always fell asleep easy

But waking up's another matter.

As though kept snared against my will

(or is it snared to my own will?)

I'm trapped in a life 

of my own making

A life that seems less real, more real, 

a halflife… a fake

more and more, each and every day

I can't stand it — or maybe can't

live on without it 

I… I just don't know. 

I don't have any fucking clue.

A L L   I   K N O W   I S   T H A T —

I wake to half remembered memories

Of a life half lived (more lived than t h i s  o n e) 

and I'm left ever lost and wondering — 

For I can tell, no longer, the difference 

Which one, pray tell, was to be the feigned dream

— and which one to be the reality?