I tremble violently
the spirits dine with me
a feast of illusions break me
because sleep is a memory.

When did I last sleep
grains of sand ne'er grace my eyes
never caked with desert lullabies
So dry, I can barely weep.

I don't remember what nightmares are
and though dreams haunt me
I don't know where they are
they're neither near nor far.

I've been awake so long I'm twice my age
I'm so tired I cannot even call on rage
Lust lies asleep while I watch it slumber
Hunger feeds on itself in a sightless umbra.

There are times when the astral planes call me
I stumble, my eyes droop, I feel heavy
It's like I'm embalming, passing into shadow
But I must continue to work, for I am a slave.

Some day I will sleep and I may never wake.
Such waking would be a second birth, fit for a cake.
How many candles would adorn this pastry?
I don't give a hoot, so long as it's tasty.

a message sent to me:
“I know you, Marrano, secret Jew of my heart, weakened by words and strengthened thereby...stout man of words”^

a stranger invasion - his technology, a new combine of words,
percentage of perception high, a ferreting scraping of tissue,
an abrasion of spoiler alerts that are not hidden but now summoned, despite being unbidden early on a Sabbath morn

and at this, my haunted hours, this secret Jew,
wanders unexplored yet familiar routes
of his well traveled innards,
pondering this sweet Shylock Accusation, nay,
this confessional truth, but more, the nut of his essence that ‘tis
his conviction, his twisted sentencing, the exact lived-level of
a hellish Dante verse that shreds the escape of sleep,
that is home

“weakened by words and strengthened thereby”

words forced to the fore, peremptorily summoned,
this inconsistency so constant, his battle,
where neither victory, loss or truce, are resolutions legitimate,
contradictory poems are the tension production
of this high wire act of the man, a performance
best assessed as one of always slipping,
more near-falling failing than cross walking,
employing his word emissions as a balancing pole,
and balancing is a sometime thing

I am not an illusionist - if anything, a disillusionist

there are stanzas writ
but unspoken
that shall not be out-spit
here or now; for lengthy answers already exist,
in a thousand prior scripts
and
the thin wire of preservation
teaches the value of brevity

stout, I think not,
man of words,  
no doubt,
one who is both,
a secret Marrano and a Jew, fully exposed,
and one who is
“weakened by words and strengthened thereby”


12/2/17 The Sabbath 3:33am

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extra credit reading

https://hellopoetry.com/poem/529429/the-true-tale-of-shylocks-pound/