Wakeful

My eyes are sore from staring for so long,
but they won't stay closed, either...
It's like I'm afraid of the warm comfort
of the moist insides of their lids
My muscles ache; it hurts to get up
but I'm so awake
as I'm falling asleep
I see a million things on the blank wallpaper
Like the whole world and its troubles have come into my bedroom
to be my lullaby--
They're not a very good one

My head bobs back and forth slowly,
falling in each direction in turn, then realigning itself
It's like I'm nodding because I understand something that I didn't before,
syncing to some previously unfathomable rhythm,
One that I really still don't understand,
but from which I draw the words I write here
and I think I get it because it can express itself through me
But no one gets it, and no one ever will, because
It's so much bigger than us all,
like the mysterious Atlantic: we can sail upon it;
we can think we comprehend its vastness;
but when we draw too deeply from it, it makes us go crazy

Every sound seems so loud,
but the silence is even louder--so smothering I can't stand it
I have to imagine some song pounding on my eardrums
so that they're not pierced by that deadly quiet
That grating, fluid absence: acid in its ability to burn away my sanity
Eating through logic and replacing it with something frightening
A hyperawareness of the monsters that lie all around,
ready to leap and devour,
ready to steal me away from the morning sunlight
before it can chase away the not-sane panic that makes me feel alive
in some feral, echoing way