We don’t get along, we never really have.

I hate the thought of giving into Morpheus’ seduction

and the sound of a thousand yawns and inevitable,

“It’s Bed Time”, joyfully shouted as the radio

was switched off with glee, just as I was listening

to some news from a far off place, or the glimmer

of a new song that had caught my ear, all cut off in their prime

and with accompanying whine “Why aren’t you tired?”

 

Of course I am tired, for over forty years I have been shattered,

knackered, fit to drop, wiped out, whacked and finally worn out;

but bed and I just don’t get along.

It’s restful my arse, it aids recovery my backside,

Dreaming, ah now there’s the crux of it, dreaming aids the mind

To filter out the rubbish that is not needed in your life.

Dreams however are not always good, and the lottery,

the taking the chance of whether you end up kissing

an icon of the silver screen, her perfume intoxicating,

her lips blood red and tasting of strawberries and with sly

look in her eyes as she begs you to come

down with her to the local bar on the corner where you both

get hammered…

 

…is tempered by the thought of nightmares. Take your pick,

A cheek offered by Lauren Bacall, the whisper of piano music

playing sweetly as you close your eyes or

being immersed up to your neck fully naked as bugs

crawl and slither all over your body, the biting causing pain

which isn’t real but feels red hot and a loud scream forces

your lips apart for which a spider lays her pulsating eggs in.

Or…the empty house, full of rooms, dusty, grimy,

unlit for decades until you walk in through the shadows,

the shadows where the Devil eats you alive

and tempts you to witness the pit in all its glory,

the furnace which feeds your nightmares and forces

you to shiver alone in bed.

 

The small kiss of a beautiful woman or the Devil

hammering home the spike which wakes you up

a couple of hours after laying your head down on a hard pillow…

Sleep and I do not get on, and yet I understand

to have a smile from a monochrome idol

you have to also take tea with the colourful demon.

 

Ian D. Hall. 2015