The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Here is the dumbed-down Virgil of the infomercial:

the saintly man
begging you with all your abundance
to help the poor, desperate
sleep deprived
who live in a constant state of sleep-debt
mal-sleepish and REM emaciated.

He begs the Sleep Rich to fill the hollow dreamshelves of the sleepless.
The Sleep rich, a people so privileged,
a world of feather beds and deep snores
who’s worst sleep-debt
couldn’t even touch the land of the sleepless with a dream feather.

The compassionate moon face of the pious pitchman
reveal not one dark circle under his pink open eyelids
his earnest smile says no price will be paid for straddling two worlds.

Behind him are the subjects, sleep-free since the Revolution:
the somnambulist eyes of psychotic children
peer out of hovels with no curtains,
huge holes in the ceiling bare the glaring summer sun.

Later in the documentary-style commercial
they show semi-naked adults attempting to sleep:
fat fish out of water flopping under florescent lighting.

Now begins a voice-over simulation
of the racing thoughts that keep them awake
the discomfort and nervous energy,
the sleep apnea
the RLS
the insomnia
the chronic pain
the uncontrollable flatulence.

The host explains
that this isn’t mere New-World coffee jitters,
but the byproduct of the ills of another dimension,
the very real dream world,
a place most take for granted but some folks
are starved and bled dry by.

the voice explains:

Oddly often those who suffer the most at the hands of this other world are those who have the best understanding of it, a kind of punishment for sensitivity, a feedback loop comprised of too much feeling and feeling only things unpleasant to feel.

Please give Now! Anything will help, Your extra REM sleep, your banal dreams, even micro-sleep will help.

There are people drowning here, there are people on fire in their beds. Send us your feathers, your deep breaths, your pleasant reflections on the day. We will even accept single snores. The sleep-debt is astronomical and the slumping dream economy in this non-sleeping ghetto is, pardon the pun, another kind of great depression. Please, please help the unsleeping, they’ll rest easier once you do, and who knows, maybe you will too!

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