Satched by Megan Gail Coles

Author:Megan Gail Coles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2021-08-20T14:12:08+00:00

Good Night Moon

Put yourself down like a hurt child

having flailed against bedtime

these last quick years,

tormenting all sensible people handy:

the full length of the hall,

up the stairs, in protest,

your once-fiendish grousing gripped the railing,

a little foot, struck out in frustration,

cracked itself off the banister,

memories of a broken toe

throb in your shoe some evenings

after a run or a bit of rain

this was you, see,

you were like some reluctant wild writhing thing,

having lost all sense of routine,

tired and sober again,

you discovered you forgot all correct ways

of sound sleeping, consumption is up

but the body is a hollow sad sack,

rigid nerves smack against a brick wall of worry

that sits to the right of your gut, knotted and aggrieved,

everything disturbs you,

sleep debt, like all debt, is accumulating,

your generation rouses itself, looks over its shoulder,

finds it’s napping broadside the poorhouse,

we spent lavishly, or what little we had,

on the wrong people at the worst time,

a decade of bad investment,

we called it our twenties,

this costly lot cost a lot,

and everyone is reading up on the basics,

sourdough starter kits and dental floss, a lot of stretching,

remember falling asleep without fear of not falling asleep,

without strategy, deliberate preparation,

YouTube videos about nature, that blue screen growling in your face

every connective device is self-sabotage,

but so is loneliness, now we know,

autoplay is worse than smoking a pack a day,

old you had been known to just

roll with it, go with it,

call fuck it to get on with it, text it into the night,

are you still watching, am I? Of course, we are!

Stupid questions abound, ignorance and addictions galore,

who can turn away from this shit-show, right?

Anything could happen sure these days

and it will,

just give it a minute

and a decent wifi connection,

the world will keep you up, ask Nan, wild-eyed,

she sleeps in the morning having kept her vigil all night

cause half of humans in charge are sociopaths,

the others: magnificently greedy

and/or oblivious,

inside the overlap there

are just ordinary murderers and rapists,

the business community, you know, men,

making appointments and decisions,

promoting policies for the pillage

while the help rears the youngsters

on usurped privileges and stolen money, land, rights, indeed,

you dread every minute they spend at the mic demonstrating leadership,

this new dread feeds on fish fingers and tortilla chips,

a magnum of Beaujolais ingested in the bath

while reading magazines about marathons,

you yearn after finish lines in foreign countries

bordering international cities made temporarily unreachable,

shelter in place is the same as age in place when you are this old,

pretend all can be made merry again, convince yourself,

sometimes some things take a little convincing

more than a normal number of naps,

extra snacks and a swarm of patience,

claw yourself out of this poorly caulked tub cleanly

and sleep uninterrupted for six to eight hours, maybe ten

if your bladder and the dogs co-operate,

there is nothing and no one standing in your way,

except capitalism and global pandemics,

a sinking feeling washes over you with every dark reminiscing,

your replay is all jammed up, old nights intentionally lit,

wandering through bars and backrooms, bumps and bathrooms,

sloppy drunk and ludicrous, much too loud music

thrumming away in your abdomen,

all that old passing out while life was passing by

keeps

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.