I am glad just to be awake tonight. Because I have awoken from a nightmare, and this provides a brilliant contrast. And if I've learned one thing, its that whether it be a blind man's blink, a beggar's fast, or a comatose dream, contrast is everything.

Because in that nightmarish vision I played a game of chess with death. But we got distracted while we were playing. We saw this ship of fools. And when the passengers of that godforsaken vessel realized their foolishness, they drew from wells of wisdom. And then, well-read, they transformed themselves...into well-read fools.

But Death sometimes gets lonesome, so when we were playing, he starting going on about his woes. He said love is all I want but in the face of it I scoff/My imagination's a travel agent that gets me everywhere but off!He's not a particularly wise player, so he turned his back on me, and I cheated Death! But like anyone who cheats Death I was caught. And then Death grabbed my mortal body bare, and it made me want to scream and swear! But profanity would be too terse, so I wrote it down in rhyme and verse!

Because in that nightmare I saw this strange combination of every god I'd ever heard of sitting in a director's chair. The light was red, the camera was on, and he yelled Action!But I yelled cut!Because my world isn't a stage, it's a movie set, where I can regroup and go over my lines. Because I am a method actor playing a sane human being every single day, but sometimes I break character.

But I got over myself, and it was an out of body experience. I saw a glowing neon sign that said “illiterates unite!”and there was nobody under it. I saw a roving gang of idiots with their dunce caps to the side, their rifles pointed at the sky because they were shooting the breeze. I saw a philosopher trying to communicate with the stars, but his ceiling was in the way. I saw a row of priests standing on a ledge, saying they're self-made martyrs, but blood on their hands, it isn't stigmata and it isn't washing off.

I saw a folksinger being paid six figures to say he was down and out.

I saw a rapper being paid seven figures to say he made seven figures.

I saw the contents of my own imagination and I realized that if you could see my thoughts like you can see me standing in front of you, you'd want to put my head inside a guillotine. Because beneath all my big ideas and philosophies I'm really just a collection of wants.

Now the first time you see that thing you want, what you are living for, what you are breathing for, what you get into character every day for, it's not love at first sight. It's not the thunderbolt. It's like that first time you realize that a wall outlet looks like a screaming face. And every time you look at it again, you try to unsee it, but then that screaming face just stares right back at you. And its iridescence sets in, and its an assembly of your senses. And to anyone else it may mean nothing, but to you its the world, so around the sun it gravitates, decapitates the burden that you're carrying. It is the coffin of cacophony your misanthropy's buried in. Until you realize maybe you'll have to live without it. And then your head starts feeling like the center of a Newton's cradle with all these ideas going back and forth in your mind and there's this great pit of fear and desire and anxiety where your stomach used to be. And at that point it no longer matters whether your family makes six figures or none. It doesn't matter about your height, weight, color or creed because it is all the same color we bleed. It won't matter if you've got a long black limousine or a used sub compact car. If its speakers are blasting some Odd Future or Arcade Fire, Bobby Dylan or Kendrick Lamar. It will not matter if you are filled to the brim with faith or if you have faith in disbelief. Because when you're faced with that thing you want it won't matter how many Great American Novels you've read or if you know binomial theorem, or if you were nice to your ailing grandparents. The only thing that will matter is if in the right place at the right time, you can make the right move. But its hard because you grow frantic and you feel like you can't go another instant without it, but some people have to wait an entire lifetime. And that's when they give up, and their bellies start to sag and they make jokes about their receding hairline and how their wits are receding with it. That's when their inner grammar Nazis start to goose-step. That's when they follow murder trials like they're soap operas, because for them satisfaction is either a feverish instant or a distant memory.

But if your hopes and dreams are really just a brick wall you'll run into, shouldn't you at least enjoy yourself on the way there? Because you could find some silver lining. I'm talking about the devout monk that spends his whole existence praying for the wrong afterlife, but when he dies, he's happy because he's where he wanted to be all along. I'm talking about the 80 year old grandfather who's laid up in a hospital bed getting his leg amputated and his doctors and nurses and family members all pity him. But he's smiling wide because after all these years in a small office building, he's finally got a room with a view. And I know that I'm the biggest hypocrite of all. Because I've spent many hours cursing the mirror for not reflecting my mind's eye. I've been frustrated that this combination of bad jokes and big words that has become my personality is all anyone can ever see of me. I have spent many nights awake wondering if I'll ever meet some woman of my dreams or if I met her would it matter? If they'll write about me in history books or if anyone will play the harp when I die. Even if none of that happens, even if my entire life is spent in a town I don't want to live in I will still paint it red with murals of verbiage. Because I don't have a penny to my name, no diamonds in my hand, but I've a bank vault full of millions in my salivary glands. Because as long as I've got something to say, I'm going to say it. Because even if the architect of our reality is a satirist and this world is really just an obscene Mad Magazine caricature of a better, loving one. Even if life is really just a sky dive and the parachute of your ambition never opens, you would have to be in a roving gang of idiots with your dunce cap to the side not to at least enjoy the fall. So if all your logic and reason starts to run away and the song in your head is the death knell of your sanity, and you feel like you can't possibly get in front of the cameras in everyone's eyes for your scenes today, remember that I'm acting, and so are your parents, and there's before them. All your future friends and lovers are acting too, and they are all doing a damn fine job. Because there are matroshka dolls of meaning inside every incident. Because the light is red, the camera's on. So get into character.