Who gave sleep?
And who has taken it away?
Some fears we learn to fear when young.
Intimations of them
become our intimates from adult conversations
our mental watchwords
from TV shows we watch.
And so we children cursed the common curses:
Cancers, heart disease
and
(if we lived in the hood or were addicted to true crime)
murders.
Odd even as a child and beyond the curve
I feared madness and suicide.
But it is often true:
The devil that assaults is
was never the one we feared.
The obsessed about
day terrors and nightmares
rarely enter reality;
the actual bad dream
when it comes
was something we had never considered.
Insomia?
Sleeplessness?
In all my dreamings
I had never dreamed
of dreamlessness.
