- Vol. 09
- Chapter 11
But where is Sleep?
My mind stays heavy
as a painted balloon.
Each thought is still, stuffed with wakened sense,
questions deflate with answers
and too easily, readily
pack themselves away for the next to come.
Where is Sleep?
My body curls, tucks, touches and folds
into this night’s deep cradle.
Its warm heaviness agreed to let me go.
But Sleep.
She sits watching. Watching. Waiting. Weighing this day’s end.
Not yet peering into my untidy, oh too tidy mind.
She hesitates at the doors to
night time’s Prohibition speakeasy excesses
or begin that unwinnable unending dark chaos
of games across dreamtime’s tilting board.
Or to let thoughts become balloon animals
that float,
that pounce,
that swim away.
But I must wait here on the edge of sleep,
on the thin pencil line of waking
to gain passage to all the places I long to prowl tonight.
But where is Sleep?
Sleep will not answer my sighing. Sleep will not come to my call.
She evades, eludes, escapes the thread thoughts
I urge to pull her to me.
Only letting go of the string
of an earth bound painted balloon,
only then will Sleep sweep me up
to unreal clouds from Chinese plates,
amongst many hanging moons,
and hold me
for these breathless hours
under the gaze of a
night panther.