The Ballad of Night Anxious

Image from http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~nicholson/alice.html

What does it matter where my body happens to be?  My mind goes on working all the same.

I’ve done it again. Unwitting, unwelcome,

I’ve woken up Knight Anxious,

all creeping worries and lingering thoughts,

all lists and fears, tapeworms,

my warts magnified fivefold by the conjured dangers of the night.

 

He heralds tumbling tonefalls, a rain-soaked day ahead.

Regardless of the weather, he never cooks the pudding,

yet proud of his invention, he harrumphs on horses high,

failure denigrated, unhinged from little pleasures,

unwashed with median joys.

 

He watches, waits, then pounces, always the live menace,

but always unexpected.

After all this time

I still can’t find the trigger

nor welcome him sagely

nor sluice him off like wet reproaches.

I hesitate just one second:

each time the haircracks multiply,

he seeps through, sucking

all air from the cave of my lungs:

infallible gravity.

 

We soldier on, we soldier on, mounted or on foot,

no end in sight, no redeeming dawn,

we balance, we teeter… and some of us fall.

Insomnia

Every night at four

I startle awake,

like a doe sensing danger in the forest of my dreams.

Trees come up to charge me,

transform before my eyes

to endless reams of paper

unleashing lists in the dark:

invoices, accounting, due dates.

All their screeching pleas

reproachful looks

mouths gaping with urgency

like babes unfed.

How can I divide myself in enough parts to please them all?

 

I’ve read all the books

on expanding my brain and ensuring eternal happiness.

I breathe deeply and visualise,

think of colours, tastes and smells,

let my limbs grow lank and sleepy,

start leaving tasks in each room of  my memory mansion

but never get beyond the ground floor.

Then I panic

breathing shallow

heart flutters that extra wriggle

which tightens my abdomen.

I rush again and again through identical rooms

circling like an inept crow.

 

Too much to know

take in, remember,

too much to search, gather, understand.

Too much choice

yet nothing is new under the sun.

Nothing captures me, nothing remains.

Tomorrow the novelty will be submerged in fresh newness.

My voice surely too will drown in all that noise.

 

The fractal geometry of our lives

the ruthlessness of passing,

I feel maimed

dislocated from images and sounds.

 

Fragility poises for bare second on my finger

Then butterflies off

To a world of vulnerable memories.

 

My pain is not depth but the shallowness and width.