tripping over the nightlight

3 a.m.
at least it must be.

refuse to look at the clock in case it is later (earlier?)--
it would only agitate. Like a fan.
you are sleeping next to me, lying on your left side.
turned away. Turned away from me. I imagine.
my mind creates scenarios that involve my inferiority
my gross embodiment of lameness.

largesse of lameness.

flipping through my back-catalog of quirks and minuses.
running the film reel of un-co-ordinated movements
and pratfalls, each time falling further and further down the sinkhole

(the hole Alice doesn’t mention in her wonderland)

it sneaks up on me while I sleep.
                     and then.
before I realize, I am slipping, sinking, sunk.
in the mire of my most sinister lies about myself.

that cricket must have slipped in through the window before you closed it,
crept into my ear and chirped out an unwholesome melody.
repeat
repeat
repeat
with hypnotizing purpose.

I thought I was a goner. A gone gone girl�"a midnight’s child of
splintered convex/concave mirrors of real(ity)
the soles of my feet bled all over the sheets.

but in chapter 27, when all seems lost, the light in the bathroom
glares to squint and I’ve given up on sleep
                                     given up on pridesuccessmotivationgoals
                                     given up on love
                                     given up on self

you half-wake, roll over to my side and fold me up in the cleft of your rock, the crook of your body
                            you are a crook, but a golden one, that steals
                           my bad dreams and bad thoughts and puts them to rest.
                           right the spinning top
and although I am sadder than some,

[your skin is warm.
I do not know what time it is.
And I sleep]

I am happier than most.
having banished the banshees to the Norse world beyond
the bridge of gravity’s rainbow where
Thor
hammers the squalling beats into metals
the metallurgy of despair paves the halls of Valhalla
revisionist myth
                        making
from electric nights and the spinning fins of ceiling fans.

Reviews

[SHEEMA HUQ]

There are various lines and phases from this poem and indicative of your poetry in general which I just love to mull over.....excellent, thank you.