you don't just vow something without intent.

my head lacks clarification.

i am under the influence of some music.

life has been playing like a record with a weight laid upon the label. clothes perhaps, carelessly discarded in either a fit of passion or uncaring. source emotions are becoming inconsequential.

dragging.

i've gone into a bit of a gruff, quiet repose. even on the busiest days i find myself drumming my fingers endlessly expecting to have a train to catch at any moment. i want to end things and i want to start things, i want to start living for me, and i mean this in a way that suggests the least amount of cliche possible.

i slept with a headache last night and arose with a start in another cold sweat on another day with another headache having had another dream. i have to stop fearing tylenol. someday i might realize that drugs are my friends, but for now i can't even take analgesics.

some days i dream of being buried alive, some days it's being locked in the trunk of a car, the submarine dream, quicksand, and so forth. last night it was the being shot dream. shot in a dead run in the back.

i dream i die.

constantly.

there is pain and a collapse when i'm shot, usually in the head or right side.

and blackness.

that indefinable blackness that could, under less inscrutable circumstances, seem grey. thick-snowfall-at-night grey. but for more general purposes there's a lapse of blackness and stillness. paralysis.

and then an awakening.

sometimes i awaken in a mass grave surrounded by the corpses of imagined strangers. dream extras. my gunshot blood is crusted clots and black cakes in my clothes, and there is a dull ache wherever the site of entry was. usually i awaken in reality as i am being covered in soil and i'm gasping for breath, only to find the body part injured in my dream soaked in sweat and throbbing.

last night i dreamt i was shot in the back and after the obligatory lapse of blackness i awoke face down in the leaves where i had fallen while running full speed in the woods. the leaves were brown and crackly, but made no noise as i moved. i turned over to see who shot at me only to see a flash as i was shot again in the head.

i woke up at that moment to find i had a terrific headache and i was late for work.

all is not well.