Hammering Eyelids

A humor-induced poem about insomnia

Death-

 

Death to the drooping eyelid,

Which eventually falls, in a dead weight,

Pulled over my waking thought,

Which dies in the fixture . . .

 

It is a quick process-

Just a screw that drives each side-

Until the lids are tight,

Hanging over my eye . . .

Like heavy drapes.

 

Soon-

A dead weight settles between my legs,

A heavy anvil that groans,

I shift positions-

Recognizing the visitor,

And, as a routine create a-

Small hammock for the little beast,

nightly companion who stirs my thoughts,

And melds in with my dreams . . .

 

Once again I roll beneath the,

Blanket of grinding metal,

Listening to its protesting wines,

To my bodily antics,

Seeming to sneer at my whimsies,

As if to say-

'Why won't you lie there quiet?

And stately as I-

You undignified creature,' I think . . .

 

I must try to sleep,

But, try as I might-

Sleep evades me . . .

Until morning again pulls against my eyes,

Peeling the drapes away,

Leaving purple traces of the ponderous battle-

That Night has undergone.

 

It's tools now lie to the side without a purpose,

The music has died, and books litter-

their unread, fictitious lines . . .

 

Which seem to tell a story,

Different from what each author had in mind-

Merely the wiles of Night's calling,

And the mechanics that He used,

To screw my eyelids back-

And off again . . .

 

They just wouldn't stay closed . . .

 

And now,

Red streaks reach out from the pupils,

Like fissures of stretched paint,

And purple traces underneath the eyelids . .  .

 

Night did a job on me. It wasn't what He

had expected, but he did a job . . .

little did he know that-

He was more an artist than a mechanic.

But the night evades,

My character detailing.

And seeks after instinct-

 

Merciless, and unrelenting,

Night is wired as a machine,

Mindless, faceless, unwilling to stop-

Just an element with an assigned task . . .

 

It has a job.

 

Hammer. Click. Groaaan.

Hammer. Click.

Click. Whiiiir. Click.

Hammer.

Click.

Click, click, click.