jay sosnicki | night terrors

NIGHT TERRORS

Didn’t plague me until I was 40
And still looking for a place in the world
Working jobs I hated
To fund my smoldering little dreams
Of rock stardom
Stuck at the level of
Middle-management stooge
Not wanting more responsibility
Or my soul sucked any dryer
Than a 40hr work week
Already rendered it
I wake up screaming
Now that the reality of my future
Has set in
My life as an artist
Freewheeling
Of limitless success
And time that is my own
NOT assured
The reality that
Even with all my heart and soul
Invested
No one really gives a shit
About what I do
Those few bits of recognition
Harden them more
Against me
Your friends
Don’t want you to succeed
Or at least
Not more than them
I wake up screaming because
My energy
Isn’t what it used to be
And the fight to keep
Creativity alive
Gets harder
Daily
Rolling a boulder up a hill
My body aches
My brain aches
I seek solitude and peace
Not to work
But to
GET AWAY
From noise
From people
And the numbing rat-a-tat of my failure
To achieve my True Will
I wake up screaming as the people at work
Start looking like little kids to me
As they begin to accord me the respect
One gives an Elder
Silence when I walk in the room
Dad is here
That guy down the hall
Not old
But oldER
Why is HE here?
What’s it like to be oldER and stalled out
In a cube in an advertising agency
While we in our youth and energy
Step right into our bliss
At the age of 23?

What turn was it that I made
That took me off the road
Into these badlands
Where I wake up screaming
Knowing the day isn’t far off
When I’ll be a joke to them all
And I’ll have to pretend I don’t know it
In order to maintain my sanity
There he goes…
The guy down the hall
With his silly dreams
And his dopey little stories
And his cheerful, manic energy
Refusing to see that the ship has sailed
Still stubbornly tilting
At windmills

Jay Sosnicki’s book 1925 WHITLEY – Notes From Hollywood 1989-2009 (c) 2010 is available via Amazon by clicking here… Please click the thumb on the left to enlarge for some more detailed information.

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