Saturday

Sleep/Night/Dreams
or the definitive coffee poem




Coffee before bedtime keeps you sharp. It takes longer to actually fall asleep but your
dreams are wired and electrical, filled with noises and movement. The slightest change in
your surrounding environment can be felt and causes a stir. No one can sneak up on you.
Nothing is completely comfortable but everything is just the way you want it to be. Sleep
hangs heavy on the body and in particular, the eyelids. They jump rope and skip
hopscotch while throwing rocks into the creek or man-made lake causing ripples and
waves. Thoughts race. You wish you had a pen, a pad, and night vision right next to the
bed so you can throw on the goggles and write the one poem that you if you don’t write it
now, you will forget in the morning. You prolong the day for the process of night and lay
in the dark bright trying to access the difference between wrong and right success and
actually figure it out upon the ark of consciousness before nothingness of ship wrecked
and stir crazy sleep under your pillow crawls out and drags you back under the pillow to
party at an all night nightclub. A weeping willow wavers on an island outside the club
door overlooking the Catskills, where you once made a right turn, then on your way back,
made a left, then for the sake of the lake across the street, continued straight, where you
met the date that became your wife and now lies next to you in bed as you toss and turn
for caffeine’s sake, unawake, feeling great, late night and mornings creeping from behind
dawn, sleepy yawn, long with noise coyote howl, wolf howl, dog at feet near lifts head
positions ear, concludes clear, “My owner’s crazy!” and too lazy to move, steals blanket.
Feet are getting cold and the mind notices this. The mind notices all but does not act.
Ignorance is blissfully aware but to sleepy to care out right until the alarm goes off, then
it’s a fight to prolong what had already gone wrong in the night and press snooze. Fight
the dog. Get more blanket. Keep extremities warm. Dreams start doing mathematical
equations with Heracles about how much time is left before the alarm goes off again.
Men fight heroic battles for masculinity and judiciously the alarm sends farmers to wake
you up. You hit snooze again. Get up and walk straight to the coffee maker.




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