Please sleep come to me tonight
Make my thoughts still
So maybe then I won't feel
Did I ask for too much? I think not
but nothing was exactly what I got
For he has taken my very heart
Stomped it and shred apart
This thing we call love
Feels more like a vicious cycle of pain
We love....We Hurt....We Forgive
Then it begins again

let us ratchet up some rhetoric
silver tongued hup two three
as our freshman president seems to tweet

come on be all for him his
loose tongue his hiding something
his branding of himself

as power potency effectiveness
hold on
catch your breath

I am anything but for him
I think he is an American
version of the crazy North Korean

ruler **** sum ill
or whatever his name is
I will take in abeyance

the last judgment
of Donald Jong-un Strump
and be all for his impeachment

or tar and feathering
or selling him and all of his
ilk to Russia for two  

tickets to tonights
opera or ballet,
just Hope Putin

keeps his ****** shirt on!

Oh how nice it must be too sleep, to lay in a dream that's mine too keep, to play in a land of my minds own construction, to nest in my bed's slumbering seduction.

But dreams were never meant for me, for when I'm in bed my mind never feels free, its trapped in reality how dearly I plea, howbeit dreams were never meant for me.

Too fearful of what my mind can conjure, fresh tortures to use as the monsters grow stronger, they saunter and strut in the prison that is she, for sweet dreams were never meant for me.

When I am the guest of my brother
sleep watching shooting stars
in a black dog's eyes
asleep in a star drift, dreaming
of tides and spiral galaxies,
I am an ice sword dipped in wine,
death ringing in your ears
like the darkest shadow of night,
a lost sailor drifting through
the centuries in a black ship,
a man standing vigil over a grave
cleaning mud off of his boots
with a knife.

It's one am again and here I am
Still not sleepy
Once again
I think of all the times I've met the dawn
Having had no sleep at all
Down my long and dangling years
Of laughter and tears
Another empty night
Waiting for the light
But as we used to say
I'll sleep when I'm dead
And lie in every day

                                By Phil Roberts

She made a bird with her hands
And her shadow flew away.
Her hands remained, of course,
But that shadowy imagination soared.

I know it's out there somewhere
the elusive balm of sleep.
I've tried an evening toddy
and I'm running out of sheep.

Prescriptions drugs and sedatives
placebos, they must be.
Because my eyelids won't stay shut
there's far to much to see.

The REM my body craves
is like a hidden itch.
I know I need to scratch it
but can't FIND that *******!

And so I lie in darkness
and stare up at the fan.
I try to count rotations
while making up a plan.

The Sandman's on vacation.
I guess i'll read a book.
I listen to some sound effects
a breeze and babbling brook.

I may just have the answer.  
A hammer is the cure.
But such a headache I would get!
That has no real allure.

Desperation beckons.  
I'm teetering on the brink.
I'd give a lot for just a bit
( ten dollars for a wink?)

My eyes are red and swollen.  
My jaw is sore and raw.
The yawns are coming faster now
there oughta be a law.

I'll see you in the morning.  
Sweet dreams if sleep you can.
For me...I'll just go meditate
and watch that ceiling fan.

Farewell is a good word
it often returns

in the dark like Charon
floating by in my own
listing imagination

I hold light for his boat
and echo goodbye

like the long nights
follow days, without pain
death is only melancholy

she said you'll have to say it
soon, you know,
to your child and your wife
and, yes, even to yourself.