There are times when I can’t sleep <br />so I lay awake and think <br />or just dream of all the things <br />that might have been, but soon <br />new thoughts and old come crowding in <br />to people every corner of my brain. <br />Unsmiling, humourless, they clamour <br />for attention, push and jostle <br />to the front, shout out demands. <br />Oh, what an ugly leprous- <br />featured crew; so hard they try <br />to tie me in their tangled threads <br />of pseudo-logic and unreason. <br />I turn and toss, bemoan the loss <br />of peaceful sleep. Then come <br />the conversations, imaginary ones <br />wherein I seek to justify <br />myself from accusations never made <br />or formulate neat answers— <br />brilliant ripostes, the ones that never came <br />in those encounters that were real. <br />And after conversations, <br />it is time to bid a welcome <br />to remembered humiliations, <br />embarrassments and tribulations. <br />See them march in rich array <br />across the darkling plain; <br />you may have thought them dead <br />but here they are, alive and well! <br />Oh woe is me! Who’d wish to be <br />an insomniac? How we each long to see <br />that little crack of light begin to creep <br />beneath those curtains when we cannot sleep.<br /><br />Pete Crowther<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/night-visitations/
