wake up

There is this burden in me, lays there, sleeping. Maybe there is light in there, maybe knowledge. I yell and hit it in my sleep, ‘wake up, sleeper, wake up!’ I tell it. Sometimes I think I’m already dead. Maybe this is where you go when you die: Nebraska. And you sit here, in some kind of deprivation purgatory, thinking you’re awake when you know deep down that the sleeper keeps sleeping. I read all the books I can find in purgatory, even the ones contraband to bible belt libraries. They come in blank wrapping, so nobody will know my wish, to wake the sleeper. They’d be uncomfortable knowing, because they’re so busy keeping themselves wrapped up in church hamburger feeds and kids’ softball games, mad oh mad! over the color or emblem emblazoned on jerseys. who’s the fool, who’s the fool? One who gets angry over what is, right there, before one’s eyes, or the one who’s angry with the burdensome sleeper? Why fight this battle when one could simply join them and debate what is and what ain’t sacrilege? I don’t care much for sacrilege, and don't feel like debating it. I’m just too busy fumbling through the dark to worry about what they clutch onto and call the light. It’s not light, I say, just a worn out bulb pretending to be the last hand hold. They ask me smugly about evolution; I don’t say. I don’t confess to believing such nonsense anymore. Because he won’t wake up! he won’t wake up, and I know he could, because he’s not dead; I know that for sure, just hibernating. And just like that Quantum Leap guy, I keep thinking he will wake up, if I can only find the right book, read the right series of words, find the right clues, flip all of my thoughts upside down and inside out until I come out with truth and this bastard finally wakes up.