If I wake at four am and cannot get back to sleep
it’s because my mind insists on attention
it’s hungry for words to record feelings
tangled in reason and memory
it screams
get me out of here!
It demands blood to break down the plaque
clinging to white cells curling around that time
I walked home from school crying, unable to explain
just the heart pumping
“do something”
it’s broken.
I know in my organs how broken
now I must find out what IT is.
Now I must make a cogent argument in one
or six stanzas on how and why my mind loses
the story every night when I sleep
because if I don’t do this, all the tensions
all the insights—will be eaten by maggots
in my grave and I will know then
I am more popular than I have ever been.
It’s nature’s way of reclaiming
what was always hers
where belonging is in the universe.
Beautiful work.
ReplyDeleteThank you Russell.
ReplyDelete