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.
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.
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.