- Poetry - Sleeping on a tile floor
in Florida, I am certain that a serpent will slither through the door as I seek to repose, and as I slumber their sibilance will slither into my sleep and into my sheets. I am certain, too, that nothing will happen, but my anxiety will put a cramp in the already depleted sources of sleep I usually bank on. I’ll go to sleep then wake then s l e e p then w a k e and s l e e p and toss and wonder what’s wrong with me and not if, but when, I will be eaten whether awake or asleep, so, I might as well reap some benefits from this existential evolutionary exacerbated awareness and learn to accept help when I need to rest. I write poetry by headlamp and booze while I wait for serpents to peruse the spaces in which I sleep. But I also choose to stay awake and read and write and learn and fight an anxiety that would paralyze me as it switchbacks its serpentine body through my grey matter dunes and streams. I use this phobic insomnia to pursue and absorb a thing indomitable, and I turn a waiting fear into a pregnant strength that I birth on the floor beside the snake and we commune, and partake, and go our separate ways. |
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May 2020
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