Insomnia Diaries

I. We either drown or burn

sinking into brackish depths overwhelmed with watery sorrow gasping, immobilized

choking on the sea’s vastness hovering on the surface -- a bloated corpse

lungs murky with algae dragged down like a stone or we blaze leaving only scorched earth in our path dead, yellowed grasses smoldering soil fields of flame and are left with the charred remnants of love a scalded tenderness skin, once supple with compassion

now torched grey with indignation the heart, once tumid with mercy, singed and scarred peels away in charcoaled layers both, leading us far from our center to the extremities— torpor or mania black holes addictive poisons drawing us to realms of ghosts and demons far from the sacred tree from the fatherly mountain

in my youth, I drowned in my bed each night wallowing in the abyss now, my mind ignites trembles fitfully with a green rage my thoughts, restless dry leaves

tinder to an unquenchable fire

II. There was a hole where the compliment might have been The unoccupied space heavy, sinking, unyielding as concrete The eye of judgement shreds with its gaze

Pettiness sweats and squirms a pollywog in a puddle No longer children who must be sheltered, encouraged, protected from life’s harshness In mid-life we are exposed to the elements abandoned in the desert we are the ones who take out the trash, gloveless in January on the brittle black morning before dawn

My mind tethered and pacing prevents my pillow from bestowing comfort I am less than half of a person Nothing can sit alone contented living its life in sunlight: not a poem, not a song without the shroud of disdain Like stale perfume the stench of mediocrity permeates my silence

Whatever you do

someone does it better