Portrait of a Man Who Cannot Sleep

"…thy pictures be,
Much pleasure"

- John Donne

I fold
into myself nightclothes
and this wakefulness.
They are too thin against the unrest
to which I have been married;
the white sheets of my eyes
bloodied in the consummation.

It stares at me, ageless
and I grow tired and worn
for its sake.

It is too cold.

The old mattress springs sink within me.
I have let the down of my headrest let me down,
no rest for my head.
These covers entangle and untangle,
tie knots in my stomach.

It is too warm.

O—
I am a man of ambition.
I would have sleep shorn from sleeplessness
in this foul nocturnal divide.
I would have the lord that draws from me insomnolence slain
and let none move the fair woods of my peace.
They said I will be king.
O…I am a man of ambition.
I would have, I would have.

Night, you must be my mother,
enclosing me in your velvet darkness.
For in the exhausted light of morning I cry:
"I must be the one of prophecy,
the killer of killers. For once more
I am from my solace's hold
untimely ripped."

This frame cannot bear
the burden of my own weight.
As I lay, it trembles;
the world shakes.

How I am made my bed.
How I lie within it.