Wheat Shot-Nots

They shot me full
of melatonin
it burned me from the inside out.

But sleep still won’t come,
california dreamin’ of phantom evils
and love (thought) lost

I went outside to clear my head
the moon burns softer than the sun
Waled and woded my way
in the wet grass
measured the depth
                                    width
                         Brea(d)th of the earth
beneath
my feet.

The soil doesn’t care
that  I was fired as a volunteer
or didn’t give Spanish what it deserved--
that some days my life feels like one long postponement,

a sabbatical from decision.

I heard the guinea hens talking outside my window
             (my lover was deep in the snowdrifts of sleep.)
They roost at night in a tall tree and our sheets sweat with
early spring

Slide into dreams of New Guinea
 my professor getting married to his peace corps bride.
coughee drops hang and drip and percolate from the branches  
and I nightmare that I couldn’t find the ending to the story--

French guineas rolling across the floor
clanging through
the ring in my nose, never-blessed with the infection of ambition…

but wake to the ever-present
vague guttural garble of

next.

Reviews

[Matthew Smith]

Nice. Very nice.

Reminds me of the nights one will simply lay awake, reflecting, when the mind is too full of memories of the past, worries of the present, and the dreams of to-be futures.

Of course, far be it from me to attempt defining this sort of poem.