in a little while, i think
i won't be able to even taste:
--or back a step, even to smell--
victory or failure or defeat.
the end of sleep is the end
of color, flavor, sound;
everything fades off-white
to an ignoble gray, more
washout than stormcloud.
then, sleep.
and in the morning we find
the smell of coffee reminds us
of the rich velvet browns in dirt,
the red piece of ribbon
on a package of something
in the pantry; our feet make
soft padding noises, bare on
the tile, the wood, the carpet.
unless--
i have friends, perpetually, who
cannot sleep, to whom the
harsh-washed gray is all life,
the self-specific silence and
muted Everything of Unsleep is the
only Thing there is. unlike me, who
stays awake to play, and read,
they bolt upright with a scream
part way through and
never finish.
nightmares.
for my son, at acorn-bud youth, it
was rain: thunder and light flashes
against the window in his dark room;
for one friend, a battlefield
he'd long survived, but never left;
for another, a horror memory
that worsened with each retelling.
"where am i, in that dream?" i once
so arrogantly asked--insert the god-like
dream-sequence Self descending here,
rolling back the rain cloud, calming all
bullets and bloodshed and child-borne horrors.
i replace the sound and smell of war
with the quiet of a forest in the morning
on an expectant, pleasant summer day.
but does it fade?
like my conscious body slipping away
from sensory perception, does Time
in all her majesty remove these scars and
mend the wound? will the war or childhood
be further behind next year, or the next,
or have these memories and fears slipped in,
like splinters in a young, uncalloused hand:
too near the heart to be let go,
too rehearsed to ever leave the stage?
dream-sequence giant though i am, my power
cannot overcome its source; the mind has cut
its channels deep, and seldom leaves a bed
to dry.
december '16
