Wilyem Clark
09-10-2016, 03:15 PM
What is wrong with me?
Why can't I sleep?
The hours plod along like prisoners
Chain-ganging out to oil the gears
Of time as it silently click-ratchets onward.
Without its magic, star-dusted respite,
My busy beast of a mind is rattled—
An overcharged pinball machine of ideas,
It dings and clangs in jittery throes
And throws off thoughts in triplicate,
All of them so-so-so important,
They cannot wait for morning light.
I've divorced myself from that chief distraction,
A second body beside me in bed,
So what else could possibly be amiss?
My living room is dim and blue
In the death-knell middle of the night;
The watchful phosphor firefly eyes
Of never-napping electronics
Impart an iceflow lava aura:
Molten, radiant, quiescent, cool.
The outside landing lamp snaps on
Whenever I enter my kitchen;
Its sensor sees me through panes of glass
And the solid plane of lowered blinds.
It's an eerie effect, but a boon, for I
Waste not a dime on overheads
When I raid the fridge for slugs of water.
Echoes of pop songs iterate—
Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon—
Heard in the corners of day and digested,
They refuse to drain away
With the rest of the cognitive detritus.
(This pen is nearly out of ink.)
Sigh, sigh . . . if only I . . .
Could at some point . . .
Loosen the coils of this . . .
Wretched . . . awareness . . .
Why can't I sleep?
The hours plod along like prisoners
Chain-ganging out to oil the gears
Of time as it silently click-ratchets onward.
Without its magic, star-dusted respite,
My busy beast of a mind is rattled—
An overcharged pinball machine of ideas,
It dings and clangs in jittery throes
And throws off thoughts in triplicate,
All of them so-so-so important,
They cannot wait for morning light.
I've divorced myself from that chief distraction,
A second body beside me in bed,
So what else could possibly be amiss?
My living room is dim and blue
In the death-knell middle of the night;
The watchful phosphor firefly eyes
Of never-napping electronics
Impart an iceflow lava aura:
Molten, radiant, quiescent, cool.
The outside landing lamp snaps on
Whenever I enter my kitchen;
Its sensor sees me through panes of glass
And the solid plane of lowered blinds.
It's an eerie effect, but a boon, for I
Waste not a dime on overheads
When I raid the fridge for slugs of water.
Echoes of pop songs iterate—
Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon—
Heard in the corners of day and digested,
They refuse to drain away
With the rest of the cognitive detritus.
(This pen is nearly out of ink.)
Sigh, sigh . . . if only I . . .
Could at some point . . .
Loosen the coils of this . . .
Wretched . . . awareness . . .