Insomnia ★★★★

My thoughts are erratic
Like small blackbirds on a wire,
Flitting and darting about
Unable or unwilling to settle in.
And this wouldn't be so bad
Except it's already dawning
And I haven't slept.
And I turn over and surrender my night
To the echoes spinning in my head
To the faces I've lost,
Doomed to fade like phantoms
Into an obscuring fog,
Like great ships swallowed whole
By mists cast upward by the churning tide.
Thus is my fate,
The counter to my daydreams,
My musing poetic tapestries.
It burns and lashes at the synapses.
Irrefutable.
And as I sit in the morning light,
Unable to sleep,
I exchange words with a stranger
Who might as well be worlds away,
Explain the insomnia biting at my heels,
Chasing me and wearing me down.
I say, it is because
I am a dreamer.
And he asks
How can you dream if you do not sleep?
And I tell him.
I tell him,
I dream with my eyes wide open, boy.
All the time.
All the damn time.