Tag: sleep deprived

Open Maws

With the urgency of

A green light turning red

I steal away to this desk.

This pen a knife

Carves into my sleep,

A peculiar creature is me

That my ideal starting point is this.

All the classic tales

Of girls in cloaks

Of wolves in night gowns

Taught me nothing,

I had to learn for myself.

If I couldn’t write

I’d be plunged into night.

I have to sharpen my own claws

And cut my own teeth

It is the hour I face my wolf

And we both have open maws.

– Vagabond Prophet

Countenance

In the countenance of today

There’s no smallest measure

Of reprieve or leisure.

The thread between

My thoughts and reactions

Growing taut from lengthening distance.

Dangling from the precipice

Which separates simple exhaustion

From madness.

People ask me

Why do I do this?

Why do I clutch to sleep deprivation

And reject  wakefulness, rest,

And energy honestly come by.

I say to be creative is risky,

But to abstain is more so.

– Vagabond Prophet

Bags under eyes, lids propped open regretfully. Blood slows in a traffic jam uncharged by adequate rest. Steps shorten and stumble. A slingshot, a catapult, a trebuchet will do, give me velocity to find my way to you. Fling me high and send me soaring across the night sky, skip me across calm waters, nock me on your bowstring and give me shrewdest point for wherever you’re aiming today.

Vagabond Prophet

4.5 Hours

4.5 hours sleep

Is not enough to support

Corporate expectations.

I’ll just hope that

I get all my stumbling out

Into this journal.

Oh that my sleeplessness

Transformed to black ink

Would take forms

Unthought of in wakefulness.

So I’ll bleed ink

Until the prolonged blink

Where they begin to

Carve my headstone

With keen edged tools

And heavy blows.

They’ll lower to the grave

Luckily shaped like bed

Then and then only will I rest.

– Vagabond Prophet

Deprived

Not enough hours in the day

So I carve into the night

With shrewd ambition

And blades waved blindly,

Forgetting its importance.

So many words in my brain

Rushing to get out

I see a splash and can’t tell

If it’s a jumping fish

Or just my foot at the other end

Of the bath.

Things in my mind stumble out

With little to no coaxing

Found strolling in cursive.

I’ve got battlecries pouring out fingers

And when the muse courses through

I’m it’s slave.

Take my sleep,

Let me eat not but toast

Allow me no reprieve

From the onslaught.

I can’t go back to drought

Not again.

Protect me from the rivers streams

Becoming desert floors,

I can’t bare to see the current

Turn to dust.

– Vagabond Prophet