When I Can't Sleep...

…The concrete blurs, like water on a mirror
Wiped clean with rubber rags and piston hands.
No brakes, but who am I to make demands?
A few more miles, and things may become clearer.
My bones all scream, “We hate where we are going!”
As if the waning sun can cry Stay back!
What’s under a horizon? Is it black?
It’s not so much the silence, as not knowing.
The opposite of “touch” is not to touch.
We don’t “see” night, but know it can’t be day.
What do we feel, when feelings go astray?
Seeing what’s “not” is asking for too much
Maybe like water to its lowest point
I’ll flow into some crevice through the earth
And nourish roots of gardens that are worth
The forehead of a fencepost to anoint?
Inconsequence. The doors are firmly shut
And snakes in wicker baskets guard the lock.
They’ve been there since that such-and-such o’clock
When, from a fleshy pea pod, I was cut.
“When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be”
Is what he wrote, but I don’t see the grain
That Keats harvested growing in my brain.
Not much to lose. But losing frightens me.
And frightens everyone! Or am I wrong?
The people from the windows seem so good
At pissing vinegar, and so they should.
Perhaps I hadn’t known them for that long.
(Or do they whisper it when I am gone?
Somehow, I just assumed they were polite.)