My hands begin to shake and that’s how I know
it’s starting.
Everyone else has gone off to be alone.
It rushes through me in an instant, like a
freight train,
Manipulating my veins to serve as tracks.
What the hand tremblers forget is that this is a
circulatory system.
There is no point A
And point B;
That a freight train traveling from A to B
At a rate of 10 miles a minute
May never meet the train that rushes
2 for 10
That my heart pumps to the click clack click
clack
Of tonight’s frightful breathing,
That I don’t know who’s waking up tomorrow
But I hope that you do,
And I hope that if you do,
You won't forget.
You will know I was alone
While you slept soundly
After sweet teas
And salty records,
The wind outside is violent
But nothing pounds on my nerves so hard
As the sheets of rain that shroud my brain
When the clock reaches for
Single digit hours again.
They call this the middle of the night,
But that logic cannot hold,
It is the double-digit, ambiguous
Glass half-empty-full.
It is the end of the night.
When each hour stretches exponentially
After the decline of our central star,
I will take any excuse to end
The keen and crippling debilitation
In any attempted search for solace.
I beg daylight to reach for me
For his arms are always open,
I will because I must
Maintain my midnight
As the start of my morning.
I understand it was named for the middle of the
night.
But I feel so much stronger
Than reasonable understanding,
I prefer my delusion.
This is the start of the morning I will wake to
In the brief seconds that follow
The epiphany of the trains
That shred my veins,
And how many more single digit dark hours will
they waste away
In pursuit?
My pulse systematically distributes tension,
Returning always to my heightened nerves,
How long does it take two fright trains leaving
from point A
To race along through each raw vein, capillary, and
ventricle,
To finally realize that there is no point B?
How long will it take
To exhaust such determined conductors,
To convince my sentient body to cooperate
With my rational mind?
How long must it take
For tonight’s anxieties to realize
That their rushing and racing is futile?
Their efforts, existentially nugatory.
Only until the storm that encircles my head
Warns them,
It’s too rough to race on.
I remind my nerves,
You’ve had the time
I won’t allow you in scheduled waking hours,
Please, leave me unimpeded.
My eyes are dry
shadows dank and deep,
I will beg for rest
Until it swallows me
To sleep.
2012
2012
