Simulated Death - (Revised) Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Looking for good-feeling things in my text about
raising infrastructure and economic activity but
cannot find them - all the while composing songs
in my head, a spirit soaring above physical life
filled with wonderful thoughts making my heart
sing so gratefully

But forced back to dry lines of a factual text on
farming priorities where a dust storm blooms, it
obliterates edges of my desk, clouds darken
about the world, unfocussed eyes search for
equivalent terms that will enable dried-out
officials to understand this dire manuscript

Time stops, the world ceases revolving - I sigh,
only sleep claims me now, conferring joy real
life does not offer; I'm meant for another world
where creativeness, fantasy and laughter with
song and dance command - not simulated death
from a dry, strangulating text