Insomniac

 

We are the strangest question by far

it’s easy to neglect this, easy to

slip away down to something quite sacred,

something other than the potion in our one meaning

or menacing

 

Each time I try it follows me

the open eye, once a candle to a peacock burning bright

now the compensation to the day

a steady prayer at that, and one that waivers

once in, from then on

never out of mind,

 

Yet there once was a sweetness about,

an hour so quiet that when the melancholy seeped or stirred

I’d wake the sleep to work out this madness

 

The night would fill and form around me

the groggy black glass so rancid and macabre,

yet together we could paint our pain

together something refined our senses and

something heavier would slow the famished pictures

 

The blood beneath our skin would rust and slow

stampeding eyes became disciples to the shadows

gleaming, as if into Africa or off to a brief heaven

wherever we’d decide

and when morning spoke we’d paint again until the pain would

simply slip off and away

 

Oh yes, the morning would come

the unstoppable rise though we’d try to fight it 

and the more we asked the more we died

it was not the apology but rather having to hide beneath the

miles and miles of mindless phrases

 

It has always been a place of death for me

and the source of life

a place to grow the light that glows to an end

a place to slip away from the slant of my own empty rooms

with so many souls now beside me

it is the most infectious seed I can recall

living with something that will never besiege the question

or worse than the tyrant that lives inside 

inducing the quality to the question itself.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

"the tyrant that lives inside"
insomnia, craziness they live within us at the moment...life has so suddenly changed...
i feel like a Tyrant who lives inside...
looking out at a world I cannot at the moment, touch.
i am awake so much of the time now...and for what?
this poem moves me.
j.

[Perdition]

"and for what"..well that is the question now isn't it? In the end it's really our own judgements of how to live and die. Unfortunately I've lived with this beast for way longer than the virus but somehow it doesn't seem to affect me quite the same way it does most. I can hear your anger and frustration though...and yet the hummingbird comes out. The only bird that can fly backwards...pretty good. We'll never be the same again. As for the Tyrant, well I think that creature was always here, just hoping and waiting to test our resolve. Thanks J.