Day 19 - Back with a Nightmare

So two nightmares. 1) My office is having a pushup competition. I don't like competitions. Because I'm not good at most competitions. Because they're usually physical.
Oh, the competition is against other parts of the tv crew. I think we're challenging accounting first. Then we'll move onto editing and the teamsters.
Everyday we have pushup time in the office. My wing meat is hurting. I did 65 pushups yesterday. Yeah, that's right. 65.

Here's something inspired by Kinnell.

Dear Stranger,

Pause. Identify
what you are without.
Isolate. You. Minus
everything else.
Say to a mirror –
This is me:empty.

Pause. Lies.
I sense you are not skinned,
barnacles on the underside
of your heart.
Memories stick like residue
from band-aids, from splashed cola.
I hear sand in your shoes.

I get it, stranger.
We are jealous of our ballast.

Here is a solution.
A mile from your house is a bear.
Don’t worry if you are not in bear country.
There is a bear out there.
Drive to it. You will know it
by the way it stumbles, mad as the moon.
It has lost its eyes, it has dulled its paws.
Put it down.
Reach both hands into the mouth and peel
the fur off him.
In the recesses of this bear,
there will be a smaller bear shaped cavity.
Wrap the non-bear in a blanket.
Oh, bring a blanket.

Now find an open road to the sky
and breathe into the mouth,
until your lungs are flat.
Now back steal the air,
it will be bittered, taste its rust.
As dimensional as regret, as thin as slight.
Now this go, breathe as far as you can,
past the lungs and space,
until you are aware your body is a deep well,
and your air is unending
and you are light with it.
And now your bear will wake.
Full of hunger, weighed down with you,
ready, for this is how bears get born.