Marathon

Sleep eludes me
two, three nights now.
Across my bed—
I stretch diagonal.
Not a solid line
but a series of dashes—
itching, aching, but
never connecting.

Not in repose but posed,
I’m sketched by some
over-caffeinated Bohemian.
His pencil scratches—
flick, flick, flick—drawing
spokes in my irises.
Around and around,
he rings my eyes,
engraving, rasping—his
strokes are furious—darker, he says,
they must be darker!
He stops—short of shredding paper,
getting them just right.

These damned eyes—
sore, darting, afflicted beyond
seeing and anguished for their
dreams—glisten from livid
sockets like the hint of water
in a well.

I can’t remember
how tired feels, that
gift of weariness.
I can’t fabricate the drowse
and the want of eye-closing.
I can’t recall the way
wakefulness sinks
like sediment into the pillow.

Parched for the cool liquor
of mind-quenching laze, starved
for the nourishment of dreams.
I beg—two, three nights now,
for the heaviness of blessed slumber—
the sinking and drifting,
the careful folding and
putting away of the mind.

Published at Wordlust : Paperfetish, September 2, 2005