Let's Do the Time Warp Again
It is 2:40 A.M. and I can't sleep. The pass out at 10:00, spring awake somewhere around 3:00 pattern is back again. Jr. wakes up frequently around three too; says it is some sort of evil psychic disturbance. Hold on while I google that...well, Jr. was right. 3:00 is called "The Witching Hour" and when demons come out to play, something to do with mocking the time Christ died. People all over the net report being awoken at this time. Stories about shaking beds and ghostly apparitions hovering over beds and nasty voices growling things like "You Will die!" Luckily, I just wake up sans demonic communication. And eat cookies. The Chips Ahoy are calling (what exactly does "ahoy" mean?) and then I am going back to sleep, damn it (Janet!) Night all.
Insomniac
The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole . . .
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.
Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.
He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue . . .
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
Sylvia Plath
It is 2:40 A.M. and I can't sleep. The pass out at 10:00, spring awake somewhere around 3:00 pattern is back again. Jr. wakes up frequently around three too; says it is some sort of evil psychic disturbance. Hold on while I google that...well, Jr. was right. 3:00 is called "The Witching Hour" and when demons come out to play, something to do with mocking the time Christ died. People all over the net report being awoken at this time. Stories about shaking beds and ghostly apparitions hovering over beds and nasty voices growling things like "You Will die!" Luckily, I just wake up sans demonic communication. And eat cookies. The Chips Ahoy are calling (what exactly does "ahoy" mean?) and then I am going back to sleep, damn it (Janet!) Night all.
Insomniac
The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole . . .
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.
Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.
He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue . . .
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.
His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.
Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.
Sylvia Plath
posted by MJ at 2:47 AM
11 Comments:
Geeezzzzz... thanks for the depressing poem to go with my morning coffee! Living across the street from barbed wire and a granite yard doesn't help either. Woke up at 2:30 last night and foiled the demons by preparing an outfit for an art wrapping job I have coming up at an auction benefit. Being 40 and wrapping art for a living didn't make that poem go down any easier either!
Self Pity
My butt looms as large as the moon as I wiggle into a size six pair of slacks that no longer fit.
The demons of the night mock my disregard for their presence by letting out large chortles periodically, as my 40 year old body undulates in the moonlight.
If I were still a practicing Shaman I would break out my birthday wand, and banish those mocking demons to the nether world below the asphalt of Bed-Stuy.
Intsead I plod along indifferently, my newly discovered defense against the darkness.
With no real effort being put forth into the world, it's challenges diminish quietly, like the last flicker of a candle as the end of it's wick snuffs itself out.
I watch as the veins protrude from my arthritic hands as I ponder another night of wrapping rich peoples artwork.
I am waiting for those demons to break through the thin veil of the night and carry me off like Darry in Jeepers Creepers.
Jeepers creepers, where'd you get those peepers.... humming through the blackness as I am whisked away to a far off inferno.
Why are we always awake at the same time? I blame you and your spooky witchy familars zapping people you know. Excellent poem by the way!
I think you've got your very own familiars to blame, take Audrey for instance! At least my familiars don't leave half eaten mice as a gift in front of my clean laundry!
the answer is less (or maybe more) frightening. the study is complete. between 2am and 3am in any given time zone is when there are the most repeats of "Gomer Pyle, USMC" playing at the same time.
I have spoken with the devil and all he had to say was,
"GAWWWWWWWWWLY, SARGE!"
Time - In Quaaludes and red wine
Demanding Billy Dolls
And other friends of mine
Take your time
The sniper in the brain, regurgitating drain
Incestuous and vain, and many other last names
I look at my watch it say 9:25 and I think "Oh God I'm still alive"
We should be on by now
We should be on by now
--bowie, time
Fourth Person, it is a well-known fact that the devil is a liar. He may say "Well gawwwwwwly" but what he really means is "You got it dude!" I have seen the devil and he is Michelle Tanner.
you win. she is too frightening.
I like eggs
EGGS ROCK
we are eating fryed eggs
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