and no matter the excessive thread-count
of Egyptian cotton sheets, the snowy mountains
of hypoallergenic pillows. memory foam,
18-inch pillow-top, digitized rain, shiatsu
pulsing fingers with adjustable 2.5 Richter
scale vibrations, blackout curtains sheltering
double-paned light-proof windows, sound sucking
carpet, and sound-absorbing ceiling tiles
that would deafen an ancient rocker
with an AI walker, the Bed moans and groans,
flips then flops, rotates northward, true north
not magnetic, (it has heard rumors the poles
are shifting), rolls on its well-oiled casters
to a friendlier wall for comfort and support,
only to push away in repulsion at perceived
untoward advances and moisture, general itchiness,
early onset of migraine inertia, and the fantods
in general. Such is its sad, sleepless existence.
Its starched life in an unrelenting limbo.
Were you to dissect the mattress you would find it
filled with every known sleep aid ever imagined,
historical to New Age. All compounds new and costly.
Oddly named herbs, finely ground insects, tree barks,
dried aquatic sea-life, with fins or with shell,
jellyfish or whale, hummingbird semen captured
mid-flight, or mule zygotes, taken any which way.
When you are desperate, dying in mind and body,
untethered from the mons of earth, disassociated
by light and darkness; when degrees of separation
have been reduced to less than zero, ought not one
give up the ghost, let go the blackened torch,
and do the adequate thing: accept with open arms
the insomnia of death, and be comforted at last