*Poem best viewed on desktop

Do you know there are people whose minds 
don’t race, who don’t call the cops on themselves
and handcuff their feelings to their feelings, 
who don’t utter a ‘Hmmm, you know what,
I think, I should, maybe, I shouldn’t,’ who don’t
know what it is to think without overthinking, and who,
in their decisiveness, will tell you they don’t listen to music?
I had a friend once named Matthew—not me, this Matthew
was never worried—who told me he didn’t listen to music,
not at home nor at work nor on a walk to notch off chores on a list
but sometimes would, at the gym, turn up the volume to “Runaway,”
which he said was about me—I’m the Matthew always running, so gifted
at finding what I don’t like the most—but otherwise wouldn’t have a beat
in his head so amorphous it would stand for a kind of dream. I hated him 
for not dreaming, hated his casual stillness, hated the idea that he didn’t
need releasing from a prison of mind, the type that only dreaming
or music will supply, up to the point, at least, that it also drives you crazy, 
the beat I mean.
Maybe Matthew was lying, maybe he went to bed
and heard a sound as familiar as a song and held it
in his head until the lights went out, the birds slept
with one-half of their brains still awake, the television
infomercialed into oblivion, his ambition sidelined
until morning when the coffee would be made,
though this Matthew didn’t drink coffee, didn’t need
substance to be made whole, and the guitars of industry
would be ratcheted to vibrating strings of deafness
like a stone.
What do you mean you don’t listen to music, I said
to this Matthew, who said, I mean I don’t listen to music,
I mean if it’s on, sure, but otherwise don’t seek it, do you 
only listen to music or is there something else you do 
to pass the hours, like when you sleep, do you dream in song
or are your dreams monosyllabic, a type of guttural exit wound
from the reality, that is, I think, you not being able to sit in thought
long enough to bear witness to the changing seasons, tides, time,
the array of sunshine across a tanned lover’s back, her quivering,
a dice roll of probability and chance, an ache at the start of the race
before the gun goes off and the tempo is lost to you completely?
Brother, what I mean, is do you even dream, bro?