Tired.
I am exhausted.
My bed holds no solace for me.
My sleep is plagued by nightmares.
My siblings sleep soundly beside me..
How envious I am.
By dawn, the terrors have been taken from my mind
leaving no visible trace but the race of my heart
the sweat on my brow,
and the tears streaking down on my face
My brain is my jailer.
My cranium is my cell.
My thoughts are my punishment.
My exhaustion is not only physical now,
but emotional as well.
I am done with the lies,
As the world is engulfed in darkness
as the moon comes out to play
as the sun's fire fades
as the stars illuminate the world
as the predators awaken
as the prey falls asleep
as I gaze outside
as the fragile Earth disappears.
I am always the one
To argue
About never getting sleep
Pill after pill
And I find myself
Wide awake
But at this point
I don't want to sleep.
I just cry once in awhile out of no where
I am fine
I just ache until sleeping is all I do for weeks
I am fine
I just don't want to speak with anyone.
I am fine
I know how to make the talk and fake it with smile
I am fine
Isn't that what I am suppose to be.
I am fine
I know you never asked.
I can't sleep anymore
The silence is suffocating me
And life moves on
Without me
Was Daisy that unimportant?
How are people still functioning?
Am I crazy?
They're acting as if nothing happened
And
Here
Am.
Just.
Broken. Like her bones.
Your hands are small;
Cold
Blue
Your eyes are closed;
Purple,
Bruised.
I wonder where you are;
Dreaming,
Bleeding.
I can feel you in my veins;
Hear you,
Screaming.
But I can see you next to me,
Breathing,
Sleeping.
And I can feel you;
I used to play
But now I dont
I say hi
Now bye
I love to play
But I love to sleep
I dont understand
But at the same time
I do
I understand why people are mean
But at the same time I don't
I say I understand
But I dont
All the time
I used to play
But now I dont
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
Beside you while you slumbered, lad,
My restless heart had lain
Through all the hours of the night
Aware of love and pain.
Aware of love and morning’s light
And eyes that must betray
When someday you should look in mine
Then ever look away.
I’ll come to where you slumber, lad,
If death shall mark me not
And say the prayer that now I pray,
And thought I had forgot.
This is still unbroken country: granite
that buckled a million eons ago,
diorite boulders, manzanita—and coyote,
as lean and sharp as death itself.
I think of the ridge in darkness where
ponderosa pines creak like beams
of sunken ships. If you think about
a slab of slate beneath the snow,
you are glad to be in bed,
three blankets toward sleep.
It can be that simple.
A winter night in the hills allows
the luxury of plain choices,
whether to freeze or not.
Out there the bear’s brain sleeps.
A coyote cries like a victim.
Starting from sleep,
I turn; see
you resting.
But, no. It is
a trick of light.
I remain
among those
who live alone.
The mill on the bay
processes night.
An engineered
beast, it never inhales.
Workers have come and gone
on the bay’s sludged tide.
The mill processes them.
It manufactures my sleep.