Exhausted Sweat-Soaked Puppeteers

Fantasy is too much work.
Whoever you are, you know
It’s true—daydreaming tires you.

We’re not saying it’s useless
Or that you overindulge.
We’re not nearly that moral.

We’re saying it wears you out,
When you need your dreams too much.
When you need your dreams too much,

You can’t let memories lie
However they seem to lie—
You keep reconstructing them

In slightly altered tableaux,
Propping this or that one up,
Tailoring speeches for each,

Renovating the landscapes,
Choreographing the props.
It can be necessary

To plan, not to say survive,
Relentless fantasizing,
But it wears you out. It wears

You out. You sit there, staring,
Dry-mouthed, blocking out the scenes
In which pasts act out futures,

The implausibilities
Of which serve as shadow scrims
For the story, which is grim.