Tonight I Doze

Because insomnia is no fun and who’s dark and frilly now?
Not me, yes me, oh woe whoah what did we step in this time?
Everything was textbook sweetness, t.v. show thrillingness
and then, then, fuck you and your then, hairy hands
spiral eyeballs, pat and rub, whimsy stick, I saw you
peek-a-wink, yes you simply offered alternative.
I lapped lipped your radiation, let you sneak in the side
kissed cursed your crooked eyelids, lived loved your false greetings
those were good days, those three, they shouldn’t have ended but
clocks, they were born to run, hah, I’m trying to be funny
you made me nervous, bulbous, fortuitous, I’m using big words
and I don’t know what they mean. I squealed for ya.
That’s what I did and you got sleepy and said now we could sleep.
I didn’t want to sleep, I wanted to talk and go back in time
so there’d be nothing to talk about and start over and graze
past, shake hands, shake an ankle, kiss kiss. There was that
stairwell, that lost opportunity of steps and railings.
Now I’m fat, draped in flannel and you take too damn long
to respond and never answer important questions
like . . . Sleep introduces figs and blueberries.
Sleep gives tomorrow. Dear beloved, let’s sleep again.

Reb Livingston
Tonight I Doze first appeared in Coconut (Issue # 2, 2005).
Poem, copyright © Reb Livingston, 2005
Appearing on the Fishouse with permission
Audio file, copyright © 2006, From the Fishouse