Here’s the seventh sonnet on the seventh day, a full week of two poems a day for a month. Right about now, the 20 days ahead is looking to me like a long haul. Today’s sonnet includes some extra-credit, bonus material. Sometimes 14 lines is not enough. So how about a twenty-eight line sonnet? Or, rather, a poem composed in two 14 line stanzas? A double-sonnet? A dyadic sonnet? A Twofer?
I wouldn’t call myself insomniac . . .
I wouldn’t call myself insomniac
but I often have trouble with my sleep.
It’s not so much that I can’t fall at first
but rather, once I wake, I can’t get back.
Three, four, five in the morning, I’m awake
and I’ll stay that way for hours and hours,
wheels spinning almost audibly, coursing.
It takes courage to get up, unrested.
Patience sometimes lulls me back under,
that last short sleep full of wild dreaming,
like this morning, when I dreamt of my friend,
visiting, wanting a shot of tequila,
and I couldn’t help her and I forgot she
was even there, painfully distracted
by every interruption, and the fact
that I had no tequila in the house,
and I felt the deep shame of my neglect.
Everything preventing me from sleep
becomes part of the dream when I’m under.
I dream that I’m awake, trying to sleep;
that I make it through the day without a nap
is a wonder, and I quite often don’t.
My mother had trouble with sleep as well
and my brother, it seems, the same dumb thing.
She was a tosser and a turner and
he wakes up much earlier than he wants.
It must be part of the inheritance,
this restlessness, this sad stir-crazy dance.
michael jarmer 