Fifth Dan status in the art of unsleeping achieved,
a school of dead leaves chase each other around the garden
while a three-quarters moon rises like the death star.
These, the night lives of heroic, adventurous, self-deluders,
this, the nocturnal dreamscape of late middle-aged Indiana Jones’
pot bellied Bonds’ still queasy from that dry martini, shaken not stirred,
or was it the kebab that took the wind out of your sails and ruffled the duvet fiercely?
The theatre of other-self, beginning to feel like an emotional lock-in
for sadists, psychopaths and drinkers of mammies milk.
Could’ve been a contender, could’ve been an accountant,
a Hun, a Vandal, a Visi-Goth, a Cossack, an Engineer, an En-tre-pren-eur,
a smiler who waits with a blade up his sleeve, for those he believes to be less,
or any other symptom of a good school and nuclear self-regard.
But the file and rasp of early shaping, the ruin and render, roil and moil,
of all things planned and unplanned, taken and undertaken,
leads to a blackbelt in sleep deprivation and the happy knowledge
that finally and at last there is a cure for optimism.

– Mick Corrigan