Elegy on Sleep

December 17, 2012

Elegy on Sleep

night falls

we are still awake

in bleary gray in the dark

illuminated only by halogen lamps and sleepless

delusions the small possibilities of the past seem almost

to materialize in our hands slippery soft as candle wax

or starlight we handle them with such delicacy

as we might an impossible task and still

they melt through our fingers why

do we do this to our bodies?  

eyes heavy and caffeine-rimmed filled

with the red of memory and distance the thrall

of self-indulgent melancholy we cannot

remember the nights once studded and bright

with magic or starshine dulled and frozen

                                                          the mind slips

dreams sharp and black as scrawled ink

curling bits of volcanic stone clawing

at the soft tissue of the brain but don’t

retrace spiked cavernous thoughts don’t

let yourself why do we

do this to our bodies?

night leaves me at the feet of a dim

white dawn dissatisfied

December, shyly

December 9, 2012

December, shyly

The evening clouds,

gray and heavy-hanging, begin,

slowly, to shiver down

in white, disparate pieces:

sleepy; star-tangled.

The sky drifts down towards earth,

dry as dust, dry as bones,

but time drifts across the ground,

through the empty, wind-limbed streets

of the city, settling.

The shadow of our night bus merges

and emerges, steadily passing through

the faint yellow pools of light

held, suspended, by the streetlamps. 

Somewhere in the distance, the bus driver

chats strangely with no one in particular. 

The light snow whispers to itself as it falls.

The blackbirds call to one another,

if only to hear their own voices shudder
through the quiet air.