VITAMINS AND MINERALS

1. The Rooms Look Bad
2. The Man, So Stuck
3. He Wants to Move
4. He Takes a Nap
5. He Falls Away
6. He Sleeps Too Much
7. He Needs to Breathe
8. He Finds the Book
9. Just for Example
10. And So He Does
11. Just Follow Me
12. He Grabs Some Cake
13. It Comes to This
14. The Soul Seems Lost
15. Kick Ass



6.

He sleeps too much. He sleeps too much.

He never gets out of bed.
He stays inside the perimeters of his pillow and his head.

He sleeps too much. He sleeps too much.

Or else he just lies there.
Distant from a scented candle, far from clean fresh air.
Gravity has sucked him down and thrown him to the couch,
Stuck him in the vacuum of the black hole magnet and the nightmare of the nothing pouch,
Gave him television as a substitute for love,
The body of the infomercial and the lust he dreams most of.
Throw him in the jungle with the daytime ghosts,
Swinging on the vines with the game show hosts.
Someone like a stranger wins a trip and he will cry.
Call his name to “Come on down!” and play The Price is High.

Or drown his visions out in full with one big maddening dash.
Prey on his compulsions with the 1-900-TRASH.

Staring at the picture in a loopy lazy haze,
He lies there in a stupor in a man-made maze,
Cutting off his impulse as he numbs his every need,
He forfeits up the reflex just to blink and just to breathe.
His Lazy Eyes and Lazy Lungs, unexercised and dry.
Even in his own subconscious, he cuts the oxygen supply.

He sleeps too much. He sleeps too much.

03/19/2008

Author's Note: Vitamins and Minerals was written in June 2003. It was originally performed as a One-Man-Poetry-Show at One Arm Red Theatre in DUMBO, Brooklyn. You can read the poem in its entirety. Or broken up in 15 individual pieces.

Posted on 03/19/2008
Copyright © 2024 David Garner