Sleep (August)

 The world does not hide that the world turns from light to dark and our bodies follow suit, our bodies trained for slow reflexes and a safe harbour to curl in; where there is light the eye opens and as the world turns, shut eye.

Under the influence under the synapses under the fragments of a freeform poem under the skullcap under the wavy hair under the sheet under the two doonas under the cat under the ceiling under the roof under the cold clouds under the arc of the starry sky, drifting off.

Within this timeless place metaphor begins, the analogies that daytime scarce realised, the fullness of perception that explains visions; here the ancient confrontations are comforted, uncomfortable meetings confronted, and in quiet is all untold actions, unwilled.

Sleep is premonitions of death, said the poet at the talking table of the writing workshop who is now dead, though his shades inhabit the pages of his effusive books and his memory arises benignly while awake and elusively asleep.

O experimental radical self-styled innovator of overheated overcooked disconnected rhymeless load, how you do distress yourself out of your own nightmare awake to find you alone in the Augustan Age, your glass of water, the dark silent room and its window onto the rhymed garden and moon of every sequential night.

Some people sleep through anything: thunderstorms, train wrecks, jail breaks, zoo time, wailing blues time, the horn section, security sirens, symphony orchestras, standing ovations, coughing fits, mammoth meteorites, crashing crockery, clanging cutlery, ambulances, fire engines, buzzers, blasts, battalions, even their own funeral.

They were not long for this world who are seizing the day, were fading fast who are waking widely, were nodding off who are ready for anything, were dead to the world who are alive to the moment, were unavailable for comment who are impossible to shut up.