They ask me why I sleep so much,
Do they not know?
Have they not seen the world?
The throes of its descent?
The night is an escape,
Sleep is a shroud,
An aegis of unconsciousness,
It protects the spirit in its nocturnal embrace,
As I snore,
The horrors of the world don’t exist,
The gripes of phantoms are inaudible,
And the stink of blight does not stir me,
Am I slothful?
Perhaps,
Yet I don’t sleep for fatigue,
It’s not so plain as that,
I sleep to not be awake.
Awakening halfway through the days life,
Wearied and jaded,
I rise only to fall again,
Starting the long journey to the floor,
I surrender myself to the stupor,
Limbs forced prone by fatigue,
Staring at the ceiling,
That grey vignette of tedium,
Reading stories in the cobwebs above,
The gravity grows in intensity,
I’m a prisoner of this rug,
Outside doesn’t exist,
There is no outside,
Only this cell of my own hearth.
Existence has a way of wearing one out,
Sapping vitality like a bat,
But rest is an escape as well,
So I lay my head down untroubled,
But it should be kept in mind,
The world doesn’t stop as my energy fails,
Earth still spins,
And man still declines,
Empires fall and Hindenburg’s ignite,
Lovers die and bloodlines are stamped out,
All in the backdrop of my repose,
Trumped by my moribund snores,
I’m a corpse in a crypt of homely touches,
Dozing in ignorant euphoria,
Not privy to what the world endures,
Dreaming not of the Gehenna outside these sheets.
I find myself brought to waking,
Not by the grievance of the sun,
But by pressure and a presence,
While the rooms scent becomes sulphur,
An unsettling presence,
Pushing down on my ribs like a boulder,
Not enough to terminally suffocate,
But enough to torture all the same,
A petite form on my chest with the intangible weight of hell,
I am held in a form of wakeful stasis,
Forced to lock eyes with this imp,
Twin orbs of magma and malice,
It grins at its own cruel game,
Hissing in tongues,
Guffawing at each breath I strain outward,
This is no night terror I tell you,
No hallucination,
But a very real and very spiteful nightly ritual,
By a demon of sleep.
Within my domicile crypt,
I like to rest in peace,
Undisturbed like a cursed corpse,
Coated in cobwebs and empty cans,
Corpseflies and last nights supper,
Most of my day is spent prone,
Procrastinating in oblivion,
Dreaming the day away in ghostly tropes,
A revenant in woolly sheets,
Dead to the world,
But I’m not a vengeful spirit,
I am content in my repose,
My gravestone of a door,
It reads do not disturb.
Is there only one way to spend a night?
While the throng bathe in their alehouses,
Falling down their own rabbit holes,
Drinking up the booze and bodies,
As for this clown,
At times it is better to stay home,
So I do,
A serenity is filling this hovel,
I greet the quiet like a lost sibling,
Embracing my duvet and cushion friends,
The fireplace licks calmly at my toes,
I’m simply existing in my own space,
Catching up on that picture or that tome,
It’s a personal health visit,
You can keep your fireworks,
You can have all of those jazzy shots,
You can have all of the rowdy fun,
I’m having a night in,
Just this once.
Sometimes sleep can be like visiting a menagerie,
A mad array of mental toys,
Dancing and cajoling and fighting,
I close my eyes,
Logic takes the exit door,
And the toybox opens,
An entire universe of prisms and colours emerge,
Faces and pyramids and music,
Skeletons dancing against my backlit skull,
All things blended into storylines that make no sense,
It feels good,
Unconsciousness is my minds best therapy,
The crazier the dreams,
The better the rest.
As I rise from my crypt,
I feel as if some presence rises with me,
An ethereal force,
Like my dreams have pierced forth from my mind,
Transmogrifying before my sleepy eyes,
Butterflies in every shade,
Once greyscale,
Then shifting to each and every colour in turn,
Phantasms in flight,
Fluttering around the room in lyrical patterns,
The projections grow more maddening,
Hypnotising my cortices,
Spelling out words that seem gibberish,
Images of make-believe realms,
Visual patterns put my brain through a blender,
Was any of this real?
Horror and euphoria and mystique brewed together,
Who knows?
But only the sunrise did quell the mania,
And weld my brain back together again.
Oh yes,
I get those days,
Where sloth is my pushy friend,
And all the electrolytes in the world can’t raise me,
I batten down the hatches,
And curl up in my bedcover castle,
With my pillow soldiers,
My personal winter has come,
So I must hibernate,
The body decomposes in repose,
And let no angel wake me,
Until I’m ready.
There’s something under my bad,
A shadowy ghoul,
I hear it,
As I bang my head against the wall of sleep,
My duvet a cushy restraint,
Complicit in this uneasy atmosphere,
The thing slinks from one end of the bed to the other,
With the mad grace of a fish out of water,
I’ve never seen it,
But it smells of dust and sulphur,
I hear it every night,
It clicks unknowable limbs in revolting movements,
Scuffling about and giggling to itself,
Speaking in ornery tongues,
Alien fangs gnawing on fingernails,
Rustling against the bedframe with oily hair or scales,
I do wonder if it ever peeks out,
I dare not look,
But when I close my eyes finally,
I feel palpable vision upon me.
WorldofHarley 