"insomnia" poems
It arrives,
Unnoticed, unannounced.
Quiet,
At first.
Slow,
Seeping, dripping.
I put it down to a few stressful weeks.
I carry on.
It unpacks,
Worries, anxieties.
Gently,
For now,
Tiptoes,
Whispers, creaks.
‘It will leave soon’ I think ‘It always does.’
I keep going.
It settles in,
Getting comfortable.
Getting louder,
And louder.
Banging thoughts,
Insomnia.
‘Please don’t be happening again’.
I shuffle along my daily routine.
Claws in,
Insidious.
Screaming,
24/7.
Shame, worthlessness,
Hurt.
‘Please go away’.
I’m barely coping.
Growing roots,
Into my brain and heart.
Blossoming pain,
With every beat.
Emptiness, loneliness,
Abandonment.
Silence, Stillness,
‘I can’t move, I can’t cope.’
May 13, 2018
May 13, 2018 at 8:20 AM UTC
i'm losing friends like i'm losing sleep
apologies don't work, and neither do sheep
don't go, because i want you to stay
but don't lie to me, you're leaving someday
May 14, 2019
May 14, 2019 at 7:20 PM UTC
I'm craving a man-hug tonight,
initiated by strong arms picking up my under weight body
letting me believe I'm re-enacting the lift from ***** dancing.
And as those arms hold me close
I would bury my face in his neck
where after shave meets his soft pulse and the warmth of my breath.
This hug would be so tight,
tight enough to squeeze the pain out of my soul
and be incredibly protective at the same time
beating away the nightmares of reality late at night.
A hug that draws out all the tears that should have been cried
until my eyes run dry
and start shedding all the rejection accumulated throughout this plight.
An unconditional man-hug with its ends free,
one not subjected to a **** in my mouth
a cigarette
*****
a cigarette
couple of poems
insomnia
and a cold bed.
I crave for a man-hug that will liberate me
from the pathetic standards I've set for myself,
of how I should be treated before handing a piece of me in exchange.
One that would numb the little voice in my head
which goes on and on
about self-deprecating ********
bundling together all the mistakes made over the years
and spanking my self-confidence
until it dresses up in a short skirt and high heels
and runs into the arms of a narcissist *****
A man-hug to step in and save the day
when loneliness breaks in,
and murders empowerment, independence and positivity in their sleep,
then opens the door to insecurity and fear,
who robs all hope,
leaving behind intolerable darkness.
I crave for a man-hug that follows through to the end
with stability and consistency,
like mom's cooking or my best friend,
or daddy's instant reaction to defend.
One that's tangible and attainable
without twirling my fingers around forgotten jewellery,
phone messages
or a drunk memory
just to remind myself what it felt like,
but only to be reminded that it can never be felt again.
Though I'm craving a man-hug tonight
I will have no luck.
Because anything with "man" in front of it,
will always just be a ****
Mar 4, 2013
Mar 4, 2013 at 5:35 PM UTC
I've been sleeping in odd places
next to a ***** blanket
on the floor of this cold apartment.
I get little sleep because my insomnia
keeps saying ridiculous ****
and its starting to scare me.
I find myself frozen when he asks me
Do you think you know yourself
He tells me I care too much about the answers
I tell him he isn't very good company.
He tells me I try too hard for others
that I'm only going to get my heart broken.
I tell him it's still worth it
He crawls closer to the couch
and impersonates my crying.
I've been sleeping in odd places
next to a confused womanizer
on the bed that can't stop squeaking.
They never look at me directly
they can't afford to find attachment
under these eyes of mine
when it's only the cuffing season
I've been sleeping in odd places
next to my anxiety
on the floor of my mind.
I'm clutching onto these old photographs
like little snippets of my life
I'm trying to piece myself together
with all the bad that I have done
So I'll cut all these photos
Keep some to collage myself
And make some meaning of it all
I've been sleeping in odd places
Under the Tennessee stars
Swaying in my hammock
I hear the fire crackle
And I know this is a photo
I'll keep for myself
Dec 10, 2017
Dec 10, 2017 at 8:04 PM UTC
To sleep is to recharge but my battery isn't dead
My brain powers on but my body cries for bed
Just one more thought, just hear me out
a memory or a wish
I want to sleep, I need to sleep, please let me sleep.
i'm tired, i'm angry, frustrated and sad
as the vulchers circle my head,
they're waiting for me to snuggle and curl
then they'll descend upon my bed
Please let me sleep, I need to sleep. I want to sleep
Nov 30, 2009
Nov 30, 2009 at 12:59 PM UTC
The memory of you is like black coffee.
Dark, bitter, and causes insomnia.
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 12:19 AM UTC
Click, click
Scroll, scroll
Light shine in my face
Clock is ticking
As I lie awake
What time is it now?
Doesn’t even matter
The birds will chirp soon
I’ll hear all the clatter
My family waking,
Breakfast will cook
“You’re up early!”
But sleep I never took
Click, click
Scroll, scroll
Tap, tap
Roll, roll
Side to side
I rocked all night
A comfortable spot?
No, not quite.
Time to get up, another restless night.
Aug 13, 2019
Aug 13, 2019 at 4:35 AM UTC
Sleepless nights,
I'm drifting on my feet
Sleepless nights
These weeks repeat
Sleepless nights
Up in the early morning time
Sleepless nights
Feels strange this bed of mine
Sleepless nights
Constant stress
Sleepless nights
My whole life's a mess
Sleepless nights
I feel rundown and sick
Sleepless nights
I'm seeing insomnia tricks
Sleepless nights
Why am I so tired
Sleepless nights
These worrys keep me wired
Sleepless nights
Are every night
Sleepless nights
I wish my world was right
Sep 14, 2012
Sep 14, 2012 at 6:35 AM UTC
dead in the night
all alone
dead inside
eyes wide open
glued to the ceiling
gone all mental healing
all the overthinking
praying for redemption
followed by slow blinking
for shame, i'm left with feelings of abnegation.
Dec 1, 2019
Dec 1, 2019 at 1:40 PM UTC
Tossing and turning
Counting the hours with the clock
Where are you, Morpheus?
Sep 5, 2014
Sep 5, 2014 at 10:32 AM UTC
Can't sleep, it's always the same.
I get to my room, exhausted, lie in my bed,
Close my eyes and the Sleepless Fairy
decides to take the reins of the situation.
Maybe if I go to my computer and surf for a while
I could doze off. Maybe I'll go out and have a cigarette
to calm the Fairy. No, this insomnia is different. I can't fix it
with simple solutions.
This wakefulness is not due to the anxiety of an exam,
or the diffidence I have for that one girl I can't get out
of my head. This insomnia is that small sparkle of
uncertainty that has abounded my mind for a long time.
That feeling of vagueness, of yearning. Yearning of what?
I don't know.
It is simply that feeling that I'm missing something,
whatever it is. I go around the whole day in my mind,
what am I missing? What am I forgetting?
During the day I'm acquiescent, lucid, happy.
But come night... time to go to bed.
Time to perform the daily check for recent events.
Catalog the occurrences with different feelings,
accommodated to their respective memories.
But there's something missing.
I curse the Fairy and its 1001 tricks that keep me
awake and conscious about that which is in the
subconscious.
Will the day come when the Fairy shows up no more?
As long as that feeling is housed in me, like a parasite
clogged on its new victim, the Fairy will keep visiting.
Mar 29, 2013
Mar 29, 2013 at 9:19 PM UTC
When I'm tired and I close my eyes,
Is when i really wake up...
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 9:56 AM UTC
.
Its 2 am and I am so wired.
Why can't I just be normally tired?
As others enjoy some restful sleep,
I am in a place far more deep.....
And the abyss calls so inviting,
a leap into the unknown and beyond.
With clarity I jump out and fly,
an excuse for reality to quietly abscond.
Psychedelic nausea as the dimensions twist,
forcing me to a place where I do not exist,
a land in which I may be killed or kissed,
but certain my presence would not be missed.
The feelers take a hold of me,
whispering secrets of antiquity,
revealing images of aeons gone,
in spoken word, rhyme and song.
I have the histories of many worlds
all in my mind strung up like pearls.
A line of lanterns alight once more,
open and willing for me to explore.
And my pale blue eyes no longer see
the images created by any reality.
It is secret knowledge of ancient times,
I receive in the script of cryptic rhymes.
© Pagan Paul (09/08/18)
Aug 9, 2018
Aug 9, 2018 at 1:17 PM UTC
The young maricones and the ***** muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
Like a collar of palpitating ****** oysters
Surround my solitary home,
Enemies of my soul,
Conspirators in pajamas
Who exchange deep kisses for passwords.
Radiant summer brings out the lovers
In melancholy regiments,
Fat and thin and happy and sad couples;
Under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and moon,
There is a continual life of pants and *******
A hum from the fondling of silk stockings,
And women's ******* that glisten like eyes.
The salary man, after a while,
After the week's tedium, and the novels read in bed at night,
Has decisively ****** his neighbor,
And now takes her to the miserable movies,
Where the heroes are horses or passionate princes,
And he caresses her legs covered with sweet down
With his ardent and sweaty palms that smell like cigarettes.
The night of the hunter and the night of the husband
Come together like bed sheets and bury me,
And the hours after lunch, when the students and priests are ************
And the animals mount each other openly,
And the bees smell of blood, and the flies buzz cholerically,
And cousins play strange games with cousins,
And doctors glower at the husband of the young patient,
And the early morning in which the professor, without a thought,
Pays his conjugal debt and eats breakfast,
And to top it all off, the adulterers, who love each other truly
On beds big and tall as ships:
So, eternally,
This twisted and breathing forest crushes me
With gigantic flowers like mouth and teeth
And black roots like fingernails and shoes.
10k
I am numb
from the tiredness
surrounding me
and sleep
cannot
cure
Dec 13, 2014
Dec 13, 2014 at 12:29 AM UTC
As I lay down
To fall into slumber
In a gentle land
Piece of ****
Yellow Jacket
Stung me in my hand
Tonight not insomnia
Nor caffeine
Or even the troubles I keep
Kept me from my sleep
The little *******
Hid under my pillow
Doing his best
Waiting and plotting
To steal my peace
And much needed rest
I usually keep the peace
And let nature be free
But tonight I made an exception
And I killed that ******* bee
Oct 25, 2014
Oct 25, 2014 at 6:57 PM UTC
Time keeps slipping away.
And we watch it fall into the abyss.
Forever lost.
So we think.
The silence is here now.
Have we hit our target?
Not yet.
My insanity keeps me awake at night.
Insomnia seems so routine.
Where dreams become just fragments of memories…
The streets are still hot from the summer’s day.
And I can’t help but still feel so cold.
Jun 20, 2013
Jun 20, 2013 at 3:02 AM UTC
Acts of love save.
They save from evil
from envy
from suffering
from disturbing memories.
Only acts of love save.
From the nightmarish and stagnant life.
From anxieties
from unnecessary tears.
Acts of love save.
From words that hurts
from the fiend of insomnia.
From self-flagellation.
From monotony and emptiness.
Only love saves you
from sadness lagoon
from yourself.
Sep 24, 2018
Sep 24, 2018 at 1:07 AM UTC
I sing to the moon
Hoping that you hear me
Like a wolf without a pack
You invade my thoughts
Live in my dreams
So I'm cracked up on caffeine
Trying not to sleep
Since I can't stand to see you, unless its real.
You're my insomnia
Keeping me awake at night
Jul 14, 2014
Jul 14, 2014 at 11:44 PM UTC
It's that hour again,
guilt sets in
because I am
awake.
Insomnia seems to be my only ally
lately,
comforting me with her consistency
like an old lover.
I feel safe here in my lonely cocoon,
here in my head
here in my heart,
again.
This unexpected world is
of my own making,
that's a hard pill to
swallow.
Spent from wrestling demons
and
waiting for a silver lining,
endless hope
dying.
If someone knows the code
or can cut my cord,
would you please indulge me
kindly?
May 23, 2014
May 23, 2014 at 5:44 AM UTC
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.
Jul 12, 2013
Jul 12, 2013 at 2:35 AM UTC
staying up til 3:34am just thinking about his kisses
angrily fluffing pillows because they're not him
tossing and turning wondering if he's doing the same
Jun 22, 2014
Jun 22, 2014 at 4:35 AM UTC
HALF A POUND OF INSOMNIA WITH A LARGE DOLLOP OF TIREDNESS ON TOP
Sleep lies languidly
upon the chaise longue.
I sit uncomfortably in
an old wicker chair.
We stare at each other.
Say - nothing.
Neither of us
blinks.
I have counted exactly
two thousand and 2....3. . .
sheep.
They fill up the room
with a loud baaing.
There is no grass in the room.
But I am more awake
than ever.
Sleep and I
do not see eye to eye.
Sleep annoyed by now
goes to the window
where even the moon is
dreaming.
A hill
long gone.
Trees snore
their breath rustling their leaves.
"Why do I always
have this trouble with you?"
Sleep snaps
without looking at me.
I try to change
the subject.
"I didn't know you
could manifest like this?"
I venture for the sake
of the argument.
"Oh no...now you've gone
and trapped me in a poem!"
In the early hours
of the coming day
even Sleep
falls asleep.
I yawn
exaggeratedly .
Hum KLF's
"It's three am eternal!"
Each of the now 2000 and 4...5
join in
with a tuneless
baaing.
Feb 22, 2019
Feb 22, 2019 at 5:06 AM UTC