Poem # 24: 3 am

A murderer lives above my ceiling
which he makes, with heavy tread,
his floor. I read about his crimes
in tomorrow’s papers in my dreams.

Sleep is the spoils of war.
A dozen devils fight for the claim.
The last one standing
is my champion and secret name.

To me, insomnia’s just as gory
as the hands of the psychopath above.
(In truth, that’s somewhere else I lived:
presently I have no second story.)

I’ll make the murderer in my head
believe I’m already dead
and possibly he’ll let me sleep.
I’ll count anything but sheep.

*

There's a long tradition of poems about sleep and insomnia: most recently, Bishop, Simic, Collins, Hicok. I've written a couple in recent months -- during bouts of insomnia, of course.

The subtext of such poems is often something to do with anxiety, regret, and such. Dana Gioia's "Insomnia" is fairly standard. Here's its last lines:

The terrible clarity this moment brings,   

the useless insight, the unbroken dark.

It starts off better; but the neoclassicist Gioia has to spell things out. It isn't clarity so much as an inability to make leaps in his poetry, I think.

Anyway, mine's in need of work -- leaps? --more like stumbling! Next sleepless night (one will come soon, most likely) I'll tinker with it.