Sleepless Nights

18/09/2020 - Poem a Day Compilation



I’m so tired of it all.

The tears are welling in my eyes.

I cannot fathom a smile

Nor force a laugh

As I sit

All alone –

Not lonely;

Not unloved;

Just unwanted.



I am left upon the shelf,

An old maid made more redundant,

Gathering dust on my soul,

A wall around my heart,

My mind no longer a-buzz

But the softly clunking whir

Of a dying clock

Giving up its last tock.



I have no energy left

To make sense of this life,

Such that it is,

With hope slipping

Tediously away from me

Into a well I cannot reach

And whose bottom I cannot see

To be drowned in a soup

Of my emotional frailty

When perhaps, maybe, possibly

It is me that is drowning,

Dragged under by interminable currents

That wrap around me

In cold comfort

Like the hands of long forgotten ghosts

There, but not there,

Until I cannot go on,

My strength deserting me

In my hour of need

And I hear that pale horse riding by

The shoes and hooves

Clipping merrily as it goes on its way

Calling the forgotten

And the abandoned

And the forlorn

Like superfluous prizes

From a game no one desired to play.



I am so tired of it all

Yet I cannot sleep –

My eyes refuse to close against the darkness

And my thoughts refuse to quiet

As I search for that which I have lost

Or never had

And find myself wanting,

In so many ways

And by so many means,

Though I cannot hold onto that train

For more than a moment

As it vanishes into the night

And I crash in its wake

Upon the broken tracks of a life

I cannot control

Or fix

Or even walk.



I do not understand,

And the tears fall

Relentless reminders

Cascading upon the rocks

Like dreams I used to have,

Shattered before me

Into a thousand shards

That cut me and pain me

And torture me

Though no one sees

The blood that seeps

From every self-inflicted wound

And poisons the ground

Upon which I walk,

Nor do they hear my screams

Hurled into the void

And piercing my ears

Deafening me to all else

Except the pitiful whimpers

That accompany them.



I’m so tired of it all

But if I sleep

I may never wake

And that,

Somehow,

Might be worse.