Existential cruelty of a long abandoned Friday
Remembered once, twice
then forgotten by 8 pm.

The shots of Chiraq and memories of Hatshepsut linger effortlessly on his doorstep in the dark of sunlight,
but smiles in his lap disappear on the pavement beneath skyscrapers
before the dead of noon.

His mind travels to the curvy bodies of Monroe types.
A palm, a fist, a thumb
caress ******* and legs before he wakes
to find hair on his pillow and lips in his face
where only days before a yellow sky and bright green eyes waved and faded.

And all because interracial pride and prejudice leaked toils and tensions in the face of Basquiat
Where once African princes and white German queens
spent Tuesday afternoons charming their ways into each others' beds
and sighing at the disgust stamped on the faces of strangers.

When you say insomnia,
people think you’ve had too much caffeine.
That it’s something you’ve eaten that day.
That maybe you’re just a little stressed.
Those people do not have insomnia.
Insomnia rolls off the tongue.
It is a noun.
It is four vowels and five consonance.
It is staring at your ceiling at
four o’clock in the morning praying
to God that maybe you’ll sleep tonight.
Insomnia is knowing ahead of time
that you aren’t going to sleep tonight.
It is drinking four cups of coffee at 1:30
in the morning because your eyelids
are so heavy they feel like anvils
are holding them down.
It is seeing shapes and figures in the dark
that aren’t there.
Insomnia is dying a little inside
every time you see the sunrise.
It is watching the moon reach it’s pinnacle
and sink beneath the earth.
Insomnia is your mind working at the speed of light
and taking sixty years.

Insomnia is running a triathlon without training.
It is wondering how long your body
can take the stress before folding in on itself.
It is wondering what the hell is wrong with you
that you can’t function like a normal person.
Insomnia is taking pills that almost make
your waking nightmares look like children’s play
compared to your sleeping nightmares.
Insomnia is having waking nightmares.
It isn’t the inability to focus.
It isn’t easily fixed.
It isn’t something you deal with.
It isn’t caffeine or something you ate.
Insomnia isn’t just a noun.
It’s a disease.

I thought that by
   spreading out my obsession
I could make it easier to bear but
it only made me more
                   certain
that nothing could ever
live up to the way  you make my chest
bubble with electricity
                            and unease

and wrapped
  in the sour scents of someone
  else's childhood
it becomes easy to forget
where I came from

     but at least I
can be sure
I'll never forget
where I'm trying to be

you told me the
  other day
that the heel of the foot
is the least sensitive part
of the body
because your brain tends to remember
trivial things like that

well I feel
   from the bottom
      of my feet
that someday soon
                         I might be free