Invincible

Painful lymph nodes
Restless sleep
Full of crazy dreams
Trying to find a little cafe in Paris
But getting stuck in some kind of installation
Artwork
That goes on and on
Block after block
Of bath houses
And sex clubs
Is it an invasion
Of the body snatchers
Or the bug chasers?
Is it everywhere?
Is it in the air?
Opium-laced
LSD and THC
I don't care

And I wake up
And I care
That in my dream
I didn't

Where do these dreams come from?
Who dwells inside me?
Chronic fatigue
Doctors
Cat scans
Biopsies
Acetaminophen
Again and again
This guy who helped me pick out furniture
Wants to cheat on his alcoholic boyfriend
With me

He keeps making references
To the measurements of his penis
And I keep thinking about them
But I don't want to end up again
In that place I've always ended up in

But he's left a bunch of his shit
At my house
A book
A shirt
Some wet swim trunks
That he took off right in front of me
Though I looked the other way
So when they dry
I wrap his shit in the swim trunks
And put it in a box
Put the box in the mail
Addressed to him
Without my return address
But that's just symbolic
He knows where I live
He's been to my condo
He even helped me pick out my bed
And where that could have led
Plays out over and over
In my head

I made a new acquaintance
He wants to be my lover
I want him to be my friend
I can't remember the last time
I had a friend
A best friend
A friend to go hiking with
To go on long walks
And have long talks
To learn to rollerblade
To talk about how
I'm trying to
At least go to coffee
Or at the very least
For a walk around the block
Before I let horny strangers in
Even though that
Definitely doesn't
Solve everything
There was that guy who showed up
Three hours late
For our second so-called date
And when I told him I'd already made other plans
While he sat in my living room
Bunching his hands
Into fists
I had to decide if I should just run
Leave him in my house
Get out
Get safe
Or pick up the phone
And threaten to call 911
Hoping he'd take that seriously
That it wouldn't escalate
That he hadn't already become unhinged
Or that he hadn't already been
That way
But I didn't notice
On our first so-called date

I could barely work
On account of the dreams
And the fatigue
But I'd been prescribed a medication
It seemed like a cop out
But I was sick of being sick
So now my dreams were muted
And I had dry mouth in the morning
I was able to buy
A foreclosed condo
Really cheap
Because I think the realtor
Had a crush on me
Or something

He pocketed the key
So no one else could see
The place
And he told me
About it
And I wondered
Was I living
Life on life's terms
If I was placing a really low bid on the place
Only because I knew
No more bids
Would be coming in?

Was this just the start
Of some kind of slippery slope?

I walked to the store everyday
And bought food reduced for quick sale
Got my protein from beans
And tofu
Became mostly, but not totally
Vegetarian again
Stretched and stretched my dollars
And tried to cut back on the medication
When I was feeling well-rested

And then I'd have a dream
That I kept falling asleep
And when I fell asleep
I went crazy
And killed people
So I had to wake up
I had to try to stay awake
And I wanted to call my friend
My new best friend
To get him to help me somehow
But I was afraid that if I called him
And he came to help me
That in the meantime
I might fall back to sleep
And end up killing him
When he got there
So I couldn't call him
I was beyond help
Powerless
No free will

The only thing that could help me
If anything could
Was something not human
Something that wasn't alive in the first place
Something I couldn't kill