Insomnia
Location
Have you noticed that such late nights create extremely eccentric thoughts/
How as soon as your head hits the pillow, your imagination runs like wild salmon up a surging river/
I realized that this wasn’t a thing I could control/
The only real thing I could do about it was to just let it happen/
Just let the thousands on thousands of thoughts flow and flow/
4 A.M. can create some pretty profound and philosophical thoughts/
One tends to get that way with a lack of sleep/
When you were a kid, did you ever stay up shaking with fright, thinking that there were monsters spying on you from the closet/
Under the bed/
Maybe even in the dresser drawers if you were a little more paranoid/
Because I did/
But I figured out that those monsters that munched on kids we heard tall tales about weren’t real, but they were metaphors for the monsters we faced as we grew older/
Either that or they grew up with us/
Some people like me have this monster named anxiety/
Some people have one named self consciousness and his brother insecurity who play with people’s minds/
Some have guilt which eats them alive from the inside/
Some have jealousy causing them to set real goals aside/
And some have failure which is because they either flat out can’t or don’t even try/
And it’s nearly impossible for people to ignore/
But some manage/
But those were some among other burdens/
The worst of them all/
The existential crisis/
Wondering why it’s the unknown I fear/
How long we’ve been here/
Is the end near and will it be clear?/
And once the end comes, what will we do?/
Did we evolve or just appear overnight like a baby’s first tooth?/
What was trekking this great land before us?/
Did the earth just start off as a little pebble flying through the cosmos progressively adding more and more like the Katamari game in real life/
All I can say is it’s like how many licks it takes to get to the center of the Tootsie pop: The world may never know/
So more time passed/
And more thoughts pile on/
There were many/
And they hit me all at once like a wrecking ball/
New ideas/
Enough to pound in my head like a raging moshpit in revolt/
But as soon as a new idea showed up my brain made like a landlord and kicked the last idea out like a tenant that forgot to pay the rent and made room for a new idea to be moved in/
I try not to let the next one die out telling myself “Write down the next idea because if you can’t make any of this happen the generations to come can figure it all out for themselves.”/
So I go to get my notebook and pen, but as soon as I introduce pen to paper, it shrivels away and dies like a fall leaf as it falls with the rest of them/
They pile on and add like graceful again/
It’s another idea down the drain/
So unique/
So creative/
So different/
There will never be an equivalent to what has been created and lost/
Until the next ten ideas sprout up like weeds/
But die like orchids/
Then another/
And another/
And another/
And another/
All dying before they can even be released from the tip of the ballpoint pen/
All of the dreams dead/
Ideas lost/
Creations corrupt/
It seems as though immediately after a though is born, it’s learn to stand on its own two feet, walk, run, fend for itself, and wandered off to the point of no return within a record of 10 seconds flat/
No need to be raised/
“I don’t need to be nurtured”/
“You don’t own me” it will say/
They continue to add on/
1, 2, 9, 20, 36/
They drive me to insanity/
Like Chinese water torture/
I can’t count the hours of potential sleep that have been lost/
And just when I think the thoughts won’t cease, the alarm clock stops me mid thought/
My imagination kept me up all night/
Tomorrow, I’ll, again, put up the fight/
And though they torture/
Ridicule/
Mock and stalk me every night/
Did I ever once say that I really mind?
This poem is about:
Me