I am not very good at keeping things going, and I thought if I called this blog The Year of Not Sleeping, it would force me to come back, if only to explain. Here is a piece that uses the phrase-
DAYBOOK- ONE- 01.55 December 23rd, 2023
(i)
Once
There were better things to do in bed than sleep.
He keeps this thought to himself,
Like a plum, or a lie, saved for later.
—
This year of not sleeping has irked him.
The sheets no longer welcome him –
He bought new ones- paid a price! –
But they decline to let him rest.
—
Is it that
He can’t remember where he secreted that plum?
In which pocket of which jacket
It is mouldering?
—
(ii)
The fallen
Petals from the flowers he does not nurture
He mistakes for confetti
In the dreams he does not have.
—
He murmurs in the sleep he doesn’t have
Let me give you back the You I took.
How could I have done this –
Taken the choicest part of you; left you the rest?
—
Is it that
He is trying to work out how to escape the day to come?
Does he have good enough running shoes
To flee without trace. Does it mean death?
—
Len Martin (RIP 1995) used to read the football results on BBC Grandstand-
“League Division One- Arsenal 6 Tottenham Hotspur 1”, and so on. It was like music, the different inflections to denote a home win, an away win or a draw. There were all sorts of delights, none more than the names of Scottish teams- Heart of Midlothian, Stenhousemuir, Hamilton Academical. I fancy “Forfar 4 East Fife 5” as a general heading for some nonsense verse-
—
Forfar 4 East Fife 5 and Other Results
–
the seventh son of a seventh son
is the seventh brother of seven sisters
whose mother is an only child
on his birthday he drank seven doubles
came home to see two fathers, two mothers,
twelve brothers and fourteen sisters
he signed two pledges
and went to his two beds, where he watched two ceilings spin
and dreamt a dozen nightmares
—
The year of not sleeping was 2023. Too early yet to see what this year will bring. It is quiet, so quiet this weekend just gone that I thought I might be in some science- fiction movie, the only person left alive after some catastrophe. Birds are not chattering when I wake up. This morning- Monday January 15- I went for a walk across the park, couldn’t see with the blinding low sun before me, so I looked up, and saw three vapour trails in the sky. Why? What? I don’t live under a flight path.
freeversefolkestone 