Insomnia

i cannot sleep.
the surprise is not within the words or inability
but in the recognition that the dreams i retreat to
are withdrawing from me.
ah, slumber is solace, is a quieting of datytime
worries
but i cannot sleep.
and so, like soldiers pacing in front of Windsor Castle
my thoughts guard me from the sighs of a settling house.
i cut five inches from my hair.
Why? because i am the heavy daughter.
the night is bleeding fog
my shourd colored breath
brisk in the black,
the cherry orange
of my cigarette from mouth
to hand to mouth to hand and back again.
i cannot sleep.

i try to count backwards from one hundred
(a trick my mother counseled with when i was eight)
and picture vaulting sheep but i am
plagued still.
the incessant clamor of crickets
crawls and clings on my skin.
"explore" he said through the echoing phone.
i unlock my car, lay in the rear, and imagine home.

i am too tired
for such trivialties;
the luxury of memory.

i want to be the woman on an unknown highway
singing with the radio, barelling forward in
unfathomed ebony.

i want to be the woman in the red velvet dress,
a silt to the thigh and thick, piled shining auburn
hair
and smokey throat emulating emotion
alongside a mournful saxophone
in a dim bar where cue balls and sticks collide,
slide along green felt luscious as a fat tontue
in my ugly bed.

i go inside. i cannot sleep
in the car with a dryer
lint sweater and stained jeans.
i crumble into the delicate matress,
sheets dirtied by three months of
shedding skin and nonsleep,
halfsleep, no sleep and only blacker ink on whiter paper
appeasing all the movement behind my eyes.

i inventory the room: posters, thumbtacks in primary colors,
book jackets, photographs and a carpet of clothing-
soiled with laundered, worn with pressed-a guitar
and fifty books lacking
a stacked order against the wall.
one drawer partially open and closet doors
inviting monsters under my bed; two sweaty
candles and one painting of a man going home.

i cannot sleep.
i sit on the edge of necessity and shelter and i want
more.
outside again i watch
street lights fade into fairies and wood nymphs,
i listen as the tree branches fall and sound
like footsteps
and i clench my fists and bury my fingernails
in my palms.

i smoke and the crickets
will drive me crazy if i do not
patch my ears with cotton.
my feet are soggy; i implore
the moonlight to lull me, to sooth me, to calm my eyes.

i cannot sleep.

i want to be the woman moving against
her flesh and
rocking, throbbing, moaning
into a pillow or a comforter or a star.
i want to be the woman in the photograph;
folded like an Oragami swan

i want to be the woman curled beneath a quilt,
solace sweetened by a
casual arm crossing her belly, naked skin warmed by
his heat and his love and his secrets and

i cannot sleep.

poems

Email: elmosg@hotmail.com