I won’t submit to sleep. I want it to overtake me. I want it to make me powerless. I want sleep to assail me, in the dark, to pin me, to rock me. I don’t surrender. I wait for it to take me. But sleep, it seems, is powerless.

I understand, in these moments, why people don’t like me. I am impetuous, demanding answers of the Universe and her inhabitants. I don’t relent. I only tug at the coat sleeve. Maybe in these hours, I rehearse the things I feel I shouldn’t say. Maybe my body won’t let me sleep until I get it just right. Maybe my body hasn’t caught on; I’ll never let it say those things. And I’ve got to sleep sometime. Someone’s got to cave. Who will it be? Me? or me?

My clock says 7:02AM. The sun has fully risen. There is a dull pulling behind my eyes, the polite knocking of slumber. Why won’t he come in and take me by force? What is he afraid of?

tribe

a freewrite

this is for the sleepwalkers
we who wander the wet streets
chewing our tongues like sand
throats warbling at a half decapitated moon

our nails are scythes reaping
beergrain flesh and our teeth
are drunk with gnashing
we spend the night smashing
streetlights with our poems
that stopped begging to be heard
years ago

we won’t ask to be fed
but we’re hungry, stumbling
curbside and ragged and prideful
we howl in the ears of vacant
lovers who roll the silk of worms
between fingers before plugging
and we don’t blame them
for the silence is unbearable

we break our knuckles
on our sternums drumming
out a war song and pray
tears are all the camouflage
we need