April: Poetry Month Post II - Waking Sleep

Moving right along with the Official Poetry Month, I give you: Waking Sleep. I wrote this in 2008 in the middle of a serious, serious insomnia stretch. I hadn't slept more than a couple of hours in five or so days and during one of those sleepless nights, staring at the computer, I wrote this.

Waking Sleep

Never really asleep but not quite awake.
Drifting, sifting through the half-minded
hallucinations and real conversations.
I feel lost even though I haven't left the house.

2 hours here and 12 there, a math equation
that d o e s n o t add up and only equals
a hang over without the preceding fun.
I am cheated, suffering through the punishment
of a crime not committed.

The clock ticks away the p.m. threatening the a.m.
and I've stopped counting how many hours
I could get if I fell asleep in the next five minutes
because that was 59 minutes ago
and a decent night flew out the window
with the infomercial madness.

I cannot, cannot be awake
because, because I have yet to fall
asleep.

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