Fever Dream

A pile of books piled to the sky
Resting in your hands
With no explanations why
Teetering and tottering
Balanced on your two arms
As you walk a path laid out for you
Knowing it's impossible but you have to try

Right on the bottom
Covered in dust
Smelling of mildew
As it surely must
The Encyclopedia Britannica
Takes up space
Big wide and heavy
Forming the perfect base

Next is a dictionary
Miriam Webster I do believe
Followed by fiction and nonfiction
In every variety you could conceive

All balanced oh so precariously
And slowly starting to sway
And fighting it though you try
The laws of gravity it ultimately obeys

In slow motion does it fall
Tumbling and turning
No rhyme no reason
No sense at all

Until it's all a shambles
The books and the house
Piles of wreckage and rubbish
Sitting smack in the middle of it is you
Unscratched and confused
Dreamy and redfaced
With a temperature of one hundred and two

Covered in chicken pox
Sweating in your bed
With no relief in view
You turn to another fever dream instead