Michael Diehl, Pelicans 2
(Audio for Insomnia begins at 2:14)
Insomnia
The night is friendly to any who can sleep
in lovely ease, nothing needed but to lie down
and slip into dream like a dip in a warm lake.
But night’s an enemy when sleep rejects us
like a peevish lover who will not open arms
to fold us in and let our sore minds rest.
We’re left to brood, buzz, and anguish
under moonlight that pierces roof and skull
and turns us to the wall with no escape.
For us the night is harsh with fret and pace
and bed’s no comfort, just a waste of space.
And if at last, with pills or drink or dope,
we find relief in darkness’ soft cocoon
it’s treacherous and brief—unwrapped by noise,
the cutting blade of silence, or nightmares
surfing in on the second wave to sear the mind
awake again: maggots writhe in a ribcage,
strangers aim raw stares and bare yellow teeth,
ghosts of the lost howl and can’t be helped.
Arrived too soon and too late, morning light
only brightens the long pain of night.
_________________
Dan Liberthson
Review by Claire Scott
As a fellow insomniac, I really appreciated your poem. Some of the language is wonderful. I love “slip into dream like a dip in warm lake.” And then the wonderful description of feeling the night is an enemy with “no escape,” something to be endured until “morning light.” I love “let our sore minds rest.” I think “space” doesn’t work, although you need a rhyming word. The tone seems to shift. I really like “the cutting blade of silence” which so well describes the long hours of agony. The description “maggots writhe in a ribcage” works really well. “Ghosts of the lost howl and can’t be helped” is a wonderful description of insomnia. The ending is perfect!
Review by Zeke Sanchez
My first reaction was to say, “This reminds me of Keats, or the Romantics.” We are lulled into a dream-like state immediately, and expect it to continue. But it doesn’t, and in the final line the poem promises a continuation, or a reverberation of the anguish experienced in the night. The writing, for me, though, is smooth, and words like lovely, moonlight, lover, sleep and ghost echo the Romantics of a great bygone era. There is something incongruous in that the technique is so smooth, like riding on a cushion of air, and yet it is delivering a stark picture of what a sleepless night can be. Incongruous, perhaps, but a joy to read, and a discovery. Apparently Lord Byron was deeply depressed when he wrote much of his poetry, so the subject matter fits, if one chooses to see the poem this way.