Temporary Insomnia

By Carl Kopman

TEMPORARY INSOMNIA

I am not sleeping well…

since my return from Panama

A little groggy…irritable … slower to decision

what to eat… how to cook it…

what to do…how to do it

Who to love…how to give it

Before, during, and after…

Vulnerability

4:00 am  … eyes closed…eyes opened… closed open

Searching  sleep… recounting the day …

The night… the Trump…

And those poems I forgot to write

Morning on my river in Panama…

the sound of rushing water through

the mind, my mind …eyes closed,  window open…

the breeze a breathe of memory…

fluttering thusly into sleep

window closed, eyes open

the dream a waking to the captured and lost

I toss, I turn… I listen for the horse

canting through my dreams  but to no avail,

that was then… this is now…

I turn …I toss

I recount my investment… the dollars…

the sense… the non-sense… the

ticker-tape clicking debit and credit…

the litanies of my life … the good… the bad…

the truths… the non truths…what is theirs…..

what is ours… what is minutes.. what is minute …

what is grand in the scheme of sleep…

what grows.. what wilts… what tortures with its guilt…

what is the night what is the day  melatonin ,

ambien… a warm glass milk… a book  Salmon Rushdie… Eric Hoffer… fascism I start to think  … but that’s worse… a curse …

the mind becomes a live …

seeking answers night turns to light….

humbling a jumbling of incoherencies

misty-minded I am a ghost in search

of a ghost in search of the night before

I remember there were shadows

And a shattering of glass

And a scream

A child …or

Was it a woman

Eyes open… eyes closed

Eyes closed

Yes,

Eyes closed

It is better

That way.

Carl Kopman
Berkeley
January/2020

Carl Kopman
Managing Editor
Carl is a retired school teacher, house painter, commercial fisherman and NYC taxi driver now living in Berkeley, California.