evening poems
while william shatner
tells me all the unexplained mysteries
i should care about
but i simply
don’t
~~~
big yawns
and split-up sleep
and hopefully getting
the cat to eat
or take her meds
at least
[almost done with this trip
and i’m so excited to sleep
in my own bed
once again]
~~~
but seeing people has been absolutely lovely —
i wouldn’t exchange that
for anything
[even eight uninterrupted hours]
it was so hard to fall asleep last night
that i laid in bed
pondering
on the difficulty
until i hadn’t realized i’d drifted off
into some sort of weird
dream/nightmare
reality
and was jarred awake
just to find out
truth
i know why
rip van winkle
is more of a horror story
than anything else
i get it
i do
but
sometimes i daydream of taking a nap
that lasts one hundred years
[give or take]
and that is when i finally
almost
barely
kind of
feel
any sort of
well-rested
vibe
with Louka
all ‘old dog’ ill
we’ve been sleeping on the couch(es) downstairs
to make sure she’s alright
through the night,
and also to be close by
to sense
if she might need
to go outside at 12, 1, 2, 3 in the morning
(which has happens more times than we’d like)
and i feel like our low-key exhaustion,
the whole not actually sleeping through the entire night,
the aches and pains from couch-sleeping,
this whole ordeal
is mimic-ing
infant child-care
not to the point where i believe it 100% is exactly the same,
but to the point where, in the past, i’ve listened to stories
of tired parents
discuss how they’re just always tired,
it’s a fact of life that they never sleep through the night,
and i’ve thought to myself, “i don’t know if i could do that…
i’ve suffered from such insomnia in the past
my sleep is sacred now,
and on the off-chance i’m actually in a bout of semi-good sleep,
to have the cause of an un-restful night be not my own brain,
i’m unsure if i could stop myself from being resentful,
and i know i’m my best when i get 7-8 hours of sleep,
or a night or two of less than four,
but these parents are talking about a near year of 3-5 hour nights
and i just don’t think
i can.”
but this experience,
this mimic-ing,
it’s taught me
that when one is the caretaker
of a being they love without conditions
lack of sleep isn’t really that big of a deal,
and (similar to how i survived high school)
there’s a certain point where exhaustion
just becomes your daily natural state
and you just
kind of
deal.
my brain is falling asleep in a way
that it wasn’t last night.
the tossing and turning and turning and tossing
like being rocked by a stormy sea
did nothing to lull me (in)to unconsciousness
the wind and stress i felt from my kip beside me
did not diminish my sleepiness
but it did make the actual
falling,
sleep catching,
(falling into sleep’s waiting arms)
not truly take.
but now my mind feels like it could be lulled
(fairly easily, in fact)
into unconsciousness
and i wonder;
is it worth it?
a different kind of sleepy this morning
a cocoon of warmth
of ‘i actually slept last night
nearly through the night
when’s the last time i had a good
night’s
sleep?’
but the sleepiness that comes from that
actual
restful
sleep
is quite different than the usual
just
tired.
(sorry i got bored of this poem like immediately,
i guess that’s part of writing every day,
right?)
the sleep
of the deep dive
into the ocean of dreams
(is maybe too much of a metaphor for this morning)
because
i am used to treading water
half submerged
half awake
half aware
ready for the rescue of the alarm
to pull me out
but last night
even when i felt myself
in perfect treading form,
that might have been
deep
deep
down
because the alarms didn’t carry me
away
kipventures 