INSOMNIA (AGAIN & AGAIN)

Insomniacs like me
Sleep from life
We don’t always wake
Dropping important parts
Of ourselves
Like entering a dream world
Where all is strange
But oh, so real
I cannot write
In this morphial place of
No-sleep
But one day
My eyes will open
And the words will be there
Once again
Tumbling
Maybe stumbling
Across the white page
Of the Universe
The creative spirit:
Writing, music, art
Will return
Gardening
The simpling of herbs
Will suddenly appear
Yet I know
What I want most
The beauty of romantic love
Has disappeared forever
But even in its absence
It will be an
Awakening
At last…

(c) 2019 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: entropic tractor 2 sm px

ANOTHER SLEEP DISORDER POEM

Migraines and nightmares
White feather floating in air
Screams echoing into darkness
It is only a dream
But what does it mean
Bad brain activity through chemistry?
Or more importantly
In my family, at least
Interpretation is everything
My mind reassures
But the image endures
As the morning progresses
Circannual rhythm begs for
Migration
As Romani ancestors’ blood
Burns from the Florida heat
Searing my already aching head
I want to leave
Circadium rhythm
Scrambles my internal clock
Producing a lifetime of insomnia
Hypnagogia
Is this another problem
Autistically to blame?
To sleep, perchance to nightmare
But I’m more like Hamlet than Ophelia
Because the dread of something after death
Makes me bear those ills
I will survive the heat
I will survive the lack of sleep
I will…

(c) 2019 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Backyard Nightlight

WHY CAN’T I DREAM?

 

Troubled by dreams that never appear

Over the decades can count on ten fingers

Plus a toe or two

The amount I remember

Why do I sleep delta

Instead of theta

Must turn to music

For answers

But confusing because

Lyrics don’t always differentiate

Between dreams awake

Or dreams asleep

Everly Brothers sing

Whenever I want you

All I have to do

Is dream….dream, dream, dream

Tom Petty is running down a dream

(great riff, great song)

The Monkees ask what can it mean

To a daydream believer and a homecoming queen

Even Billy Ocean sings

Get outta my dreams

Get into my car

(The backseat—honestly unromantic!)

But not many sing about a dream

About being actually asleep

About living a life of puzzle

With strangers who seem real

With cliffs shaking us off so we fall

With monsters chasing us through dark halls

With lovers whose names we call

With familiar family, friends, dogs and cats

Talking birds and stampeding cattle

Are remembered dreams too personal

A taboo translation into lyrics

Or is that the font of great art

What’s with dreams…

 

© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Dreams (Pinterest, no attribution)

PHANTOMS OF THE NIGHT

 

Reading ghost stories

In my darkened room

Middle of the night

Finally eyes closed

Falling into a Beta sleep

Creepy images

My old friends

Presented by Hypnagogia

Sleep disorder extraordinaire

Flickering, ghostly girls

From the novel

Originating in a Central Casting union shop

Translucent skin reminiscent of

Victorian tubercular heroines

Smudged, dark eye-bags

Herbalists diagnose as

Renal dysfunction

So much like my favorite flick

Carnival of Souls

Yet Gran looked like herself

When she visited me

On my birthday

Superimposed her face on mine

In the bathroom mirror

Mom did too

Except her hair and clothes

Were World War Two-ish

As she perched on the arm

Of my couch

And I told her to go

Too many issues

When she lived

And breathed her fire

At desperately-wanting-to-be-loved-by-Mommy me

So, no

Ghosts R Us

Not smeared and stained

Not bloody and un-brained

Us R Ghosts

Look in the mirror…

 

© 2016 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: young woman reading ghost stories, Wiki Commons

ARACHNIPHOBIAN SLEEP DISORDER

 

Dark room, bed of nails

Whispering, “No sleep for you”

Suddenly saw the truth

Superimposed on this world

Rusty red

Old blood red

Spider web

Hollywood size

With matching web-weaver

Also tainted red

Her legs stretching forever

Into the hostile aethers

Saw you and I

Knocking around the nexus

Tangled in the warp and weft

Of a bored tale-teller

Soon to tire and tip

Her latest universe

Clean her house

Sweep away superfluous lattices

Then pitilessly begin another day

Oh, thought I

I understand now

The secret of life

I’m drug-free so

Can’t blame revelation on that mess

Hypnagogic images leave me clueless

One wonders if the Collective Unconscious

Focusing on similar cosmogonies

Has more veracity than suspected

Because this time I know

The Spiderwoman of folklore

Is best left unseen…

 

© 2016 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: freepik.com

 

HYPNAGOGIA

Sharing three in the morning

With you, but

Don’t know what zone

You’re in, or where

Wandering through the hall

Whales on the kitchen floor

Myopic stream of consciousness

Concludes

They are merely shadows

The detritus of sleeping disorders

Window A/C shakes sweating walls

Noise covering the thump of my

Crying-out-to-you pulse

Silently slowing

In its vacuum…

 

© Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

 

SYLLABLES HAIKU

(JUST FOUND OUT IT IS NATIONAL HAIKU MONTH.  MAYBE I’M OVERREACTING, BUT THE US POETRY SPONSORS HAVE DECLARED THAT HAIKU, A TRADITIONAL JAPANESE POETIC FORM USING 5-7-5 SYLLABLES, NEED NOT APPLY!  IN FACT, IT IS AGAINST THE RULES TO USE 5-7-5.  SO WHY NOT CHANGE THE NAME FROM HAIKU TO SOMETHING ELSE?  I AM GOING TO WRITE A HAIKU A DAY AND BECAUSE I LOVE SYLLABLES, THEY WILL BE IN TRADITIONAL 5-7-5 FORM 🙂  )

Unable to sleep

I count syllables based on

Stream of consciousness…

 

(yeah, ok, maybe I’ve circumvented the true rules too!)

(c) 2016 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: tribune.com.pk Sleepless Nights

 

 

 

 

FUNDAMENTAL FOUNDATION

Finding no relief in sleep

Fighting the hypnagogic images

Flashing behind my eyelids

Feeling a stranger, sleeping man, beside me

Frightening yet comforting image detaches

From the vivid spectrum

Flickering

Face veiled

Flight of a

Full-length statue resurrected

From the coldness of alabaster

Fluttering into our

Flesh and whispering

Find your wind rose

Freedom comes

From letting it drift

Forget where it may land

Feathery

Finger of

Fortune

Follow it to the end of time

Fleetingly, I recognize her as a

Fantasy resembling Corradini’s Veiled Truth

Foggily sleep-deprived, it is probably part of the

Phantasmagoria that will not let me slumber…

© 2014 ViataMaja, Laminas