AD.

foto by smith

arghhh! i can’t sleep, and it’s two-bloody-thirty in the morning.

i was so tired from walking the heath and downtown london and the back & forth in between that i went to bed at 8:30. couldn’t sleep. went to bed again at 11. couldn’t sleep. again at 1. can’t sleep. my body’s dead, while my mind’s going 4 million miles an hour.

i asked the pharmacist for a decongestant that would NOT keep me awake.  took 1 pill this morning, and a 2nd at noon. they’re 4 to 6 hour pills, but i’m speeding like mad 13 hours later. and i know what speed is, having done 30 years of it. only this stuff is all edge, no joy.  my body is too frigging old for chemical edges.

i tossed and turned so much in bed i was afraid kathy was going to awake, rise up and beat me to sleep, so i came down here in the cold to sleep on a 3 foot mini-couch. i am 6 foot 3 inches tall. have a chair pulled up for my leg overflow, pillows softening the pointy places.

and i’m nowhere near sleep.

one of the good things over here is the pharmacists give you a lot of prescription stuff without a prescription. the bad thing over here is the pharmacists give you a lot of prescription stuff without a prescription.

i just wanted to breathe every now and then while my polyp-scrapped sinuses take forever to heal – i didn’t want to be the waking dead.

guess kathy will go walking the thames alone in the morning – while i day sleep, like a bloody vampire.

foto by smith

2 Responses

  1. Insomnia

    Generally you’ll sleep through it
    but on occasions of anticipation, heartache
    or too much caffeine
    you may find yourself lying awake
    at 3:25 am and the world is silent
    perfectly still longing for sleep
    you may hear your heart beat
    like the pendulum of a grandfather clock
    in the next room
    ear pressed against pillow
    turned back in
    listening
    to your own blood flow
    its echo the sound of the ocean
    in a seashell
    then in the distance
    timpani drums, hundreds of them
    muffled mallets bouncing off skins
    like a heavy rain on canvas
    marching closer and closer
    their rhythms resonating in the pit of your stomach
    giving way to the metallic clack and clatter
    of steel wheel on rail
    and then for an instant
    the sky is full of train sound
    and you’re awake
    on this occasion of anticipation, heartache
    or too much caffeine
    then the wheels surrender
    to the rain
    and the rain bows to the tympanis
    And the tympanis march away
    leaving you with the sound
    of the ocean in a seashell
    but generally
    you’ll sleep through it.

  2. comment entered for poet-ick jack cuz his links won’t link (it happens to us all, eventually) …

    When I can’t sleep I start reading, The PD, Time Magazine or the New Yorker, the Bible–like that. The purple prose lulls my brain into semi-consciousness and pretty soon I fall over snoring. Or I revisit some old piece of crap I wrote three years ago and have sixty revisions on my hardrive. That puts me to sleep sitting up. If you like I’ll send you some.

    my answer to poet-ick …

    2 problems with your solution to that specific sleepless night – the first was the chemical decongestant. strong bugger. i can see why they make bootleg speed out of antihistimines.

    the 2nd is my reading matter – famous investigative articles from 1945 thru 2004 …. things like the my lai massacre and the south afrikan death squads. probably the most important book i’ve read (important to me and my life and my thinking) since jack kerouac’s on the road and aldous huxley’s the doors of perception. according to
    this, there ain’t no honor nowhere within politics. england is pretty much as much mass murdering scum as the u.s. … and richard woolcott, the australian ambasador to indonesia, when asked for advice whether they should step in and stop indonesia from mass murdering 300,000 east timorians said if we let them kill them, it”ll be a lot easier getting the gas deal we want from indonesia than from east timor – then said, “i know i am recommending a pragmatic rather than a principled stand but that is what national interest and foreign policy is all about.” . just finished the thalidomine chapter so know it ain’t just the governments that are mass murdering scum, it’s also the business ceos – o, wait, that’s redundant isn’t it – there ain’t no difference between the cocksuckers is there.

    book is Tell Me No Lies edited by john pilger. the stories so far must represent 10-15 million deaths at least. last half of the book seems devoted to the 2 george bush mass murderers.

    so perhaps my choice of night reading needs reexamining.

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