How Long Can I Distract Myself?

How long can I distract myself
from a gut of billowing fat,
from the breathlessness in a flight of steps,
or the clenches in my chest?

How long can I distract myself
from the strains below my knees,
from the bubbles in my spine,
or the headaches running free?

I’m not obese, I’m not diseased,
nor old—I’m just unwell.
And how much longer can I drape Heaven
across these private Hells?

How long can I distract myself
with fantasies of This Will Change,
with promises to calendars not yet hanged,
with endless tricks securing the salvation
of old habits from their graves?

How can I distract myself
with made-with-real-fruit fruit snacks,
with rounding up my sleep to the nearest hour,
with, “Yes, very soon I’ll read
all these hardcovers and paperbacks”?

I don’t lose hope, nor vows I wrote,
nor dreams—just track of time.
But how much losing will time allow
till retribution for my lazy crimes?

And how dare that I distract myself
from the blood pinching through my heart;
from the accruing clogs of an artery time bomb;
from the disgust that intrudes my mirror;
from the sadly dark, fearful, begging, ripping, endless, hollowed, muted, hacking,
irreversible, frightened, frightened, screaming rage of wasted years;
from the honest, inescapable chill of early death exploding like glue inside my mind;
from my rawest wailing—a mutant infant rocking lonely in the night.

And I’m not well.  I’m more than wrong.

Gone is the grip on all my goals,
which eloped with all my daydreams.
And off they float.  Off they go.
And how far can they drift before oxygen sneaks away
and pop on the frigid expanse of the empty cold?

How long can I distract myself?
How much longer can this go on?
Will my foolish body still fake a pulse, yell “Sunny days ahead!”
when futures flee, veins ignite, and the hour marks me dead?