My Words, My World

First drafts – A few pages in the large wilderness of the world of writing

Archive for the tag “tiredness”

Somewhere

Clock tick, ticking in the silence of the apartment
or
the apartments because there are nine in the block
and
I’m the only one awake at this time,
in
these hours where I should be elsewhere
and
not writing, or reading or dropping benzodiazepine for sleeping
and
my body aches for sleep
but
my mind tells my body to fuck off
and
get up, get going and do something
and
I’m on the sofa with a pen in one hand
and
a notebook in the other and a book by my side
and
the clock keeps ticking
and
to think that somewhere the sun is rising
and
somewhere else it’s setting on another day
as
the momentum of our forward roll takes us around
a
big ball of light and heat that keeps us here,
alive,
going nowhere except forward;
rolling, rolling
in space time, in real time,
(who’s got the time anyway?)
as
somewhere to the east of me the sun is coming up
and
somewhere to the west of me it’s going down
as
10,000 lives have just left
and
10,000 have just begun
and
we just keep on rolling. Somewhere.

Back to that old chestnut

Sleep no longer came around so often;

it shied away like some embarassed first date,

or a cat that slinks away under a moonlit sky,

or the thief leaving the scene of the crime.

Ah, fuck it!

There are still a million words to write.

The man who counted the dark

He knew how long he lay there. He never had the problem of keeping time in the dark. He would lay with his eyes closed and his mind would toboggan along the cold hard slide of his twisting thoughts but he would still keep time. He loathed the fact he could keep time in the dark while others slept and he couldn’t.

He didn’t have this problem during the day. During the day he would yawn and lose track of time if he didn’t look at his watch. Minutes could drift into half-hours and hours. If he didn’t have his watch he wouldn’t know the difference. Minutes ran and stumbled into each other as he yawned his way through the waking hours until he wound down for the evening until around midnight where, after a drink and a read, he would sleep. He would sleep until the night, cruel and vengeful, would wake him and the process would start over again, as surely as ice will form on a mountain lake in winter, and he’d lay there keeping track of time.

For ten years now he’d lain awake in the dark counting the minutes that ran into hours and he guessed that it would now always be like that until the darkness could no longer be counted.

Ernesto, has the sun risen?

The sun also rises.

Donde esta la fiesta Ernesto?

The sun also rises. It rises on a new day, in a new way, earlier than yesterday and later than tomorrow, when the sun also rises.

The sun also rises in a cloak of washed pink, when the blue finally lets go and after the black has given up the ghost.  Eventually it will shine a light on the eastern-facing peaks 5,000 feet above my right shoulder as I sit.

The sun also rises on new hopes and old fears.  Hopes are always new, even if they’re the same hopes you had yesterday, last week or even last year. Hopes are renewable, and like solar power, and are renewed with the coming sun.

The sun also rises on the birds that sing in the new day. Each voice different, discernible from the others.  If I was a cat I’d be at my wits end figuring ways to go and catch one. A swift bite to the neck and it would sing no more. But I’m no more cat than I am prehistoric Auroch, and the birds fill me with pleasure. I can leave them to their song. What do they sing anyway?

The sun also rises on a short night of discarded dreams. Dreams, and drugs to make you sleep, but don’t. The sun also rises on tiredness, which I fight with everything I have to hand; my 2H pencil and notebook. I write.

Become

Here am I
Who am I
In the mirror
My eyes
The eyes of someone
I no longer know
The eyes of someone
Who no longer shows
A light
A smile
I revile, myself
And who I’ve become
No longer one
Who was someone
To care
To share
To bare his soul
Insomnia has left a hole
But hope will not desert me.

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