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Best Famous Insomnia Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Insomnia poems. This is a select list of the best famous Insomnia poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Insomnia poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of insomnia poems.

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Written by Charles Simic | Create an image from this poem

White

 A New Version: 1980

 What is that little black thing I see there
 in the white?
 Walt Whitman


One

Out of poverty
To begin again: 

With the color of the bride
And that of blindness,

Touch what I can
Of the quick,

Speak and then wait,
As if this light

Will continue to linger
On the threshold.
All that is near, I no longer give it a name.
Once a stone hard of hearing, Once sharpened into a knife.
.
.
Now only a chill Slipping through.
Enough glow to kneel by and ask To be tied to its tail When it goes marrying Its cousins, the stars.
Is it a cloud? If it's a cloud it will move on.
The true shape of this thought, Migrant, waning.
Something seeks someone, It bears him a gift Of himself, a bit Of snow to taste, Glimpse of his own nakedness By which to imagine the face.
On a late afternoon of snow In a dim badly-aired grocery, Where a door has just rung With a short, shrill echo, A little boy hands the old, Hard-faced woman Bending low over the counter, A shiny nickel for a cupcake.
Now only that shine, now Only that lull abides.
That your gaze Be merciful, Sister, bride Of my first hopeless insomnia.
Kind nurse, show me The place of salves.
Teach me the song That makes a man rise His glass at dusk Until a star dances in it.
Who are you? Are you anybody A moonrock would recognize? There are words I need.
They are not near men.
I went searching.
Is this a deathmarch? You bend me, bend me, Oh toward what flower! Little-known vowel, Noose big for us all.
As strange as a shepherd In the Arctic Circle.
Someone like Bo-peep.
All his sheep are white And he can't get any sleep Over lost sheep.
And he's got a flute Which says Bo-peep, Which says Poor boy, Take care of your snow-sheep.
to A.
S.
Hamilton Then all's well and white, And no more than white.
Illinois snowbound.
Indiana with one bare tree.
Michigan a storm-cloud.
Wisconsin empty of men.
There's a trap on the ice Laid there centuries ago.
The bait is still fresh.
The metal glitters as the night descends.
Woe, woe, it sings from the bough.
Our Lady, etc.
.
.
You had me hoodwinked.
I see your brand new claws.
Praying, what do I betray By desiring your purity? There are old men and women, All bandaged up, waiting At the spiked, wrought-iron gate Of the Great Eye and Ear Infirmery.
We haven't gone far.
.
.
Fear lives there too.
Five ears of my fingertips Against the white page.
What do you hear? We hear holy nothing Blindfolding itself.
It touched you once, twice, And tore like a stitch Out of a new wound.
Two What are you up to son of a gun? I roast on my heart's dark side.
What do you use as a skewer sweetheart? I use my own crooked backbone.
What do you salt yourself with loverboy? I grind the words out of my spittle.
And how will you know when you're done chump? When the half-moons on my fingernails set.
With what knife will you carve yourself smartass? The one I hide in my tongue's black boot.
Well, you can't call me a wrestler If my own dead weight has me pinned down.
Well, you can't call me a cook If the pot's got me under its cover.
Well, you can't call me a king if the flies hang their hats in my mouth.
Well, you can't call me smart, When the rain's falling my cup's in the cupboard.
Nor can you call me a saint, If I didn't err, there wouldn't be these smudges.
One has to manage as best as one can.
The poppies ate the sunset for supper.
One has to manage as best as one can.
Who stole my blue thread, the one I tied around my pinky to remember? One has to manage as best as one can.
The flea I was standing on, jumped.
One has to manage as best as one can.
I think my head went out for a walk.
One has to manage as best as one can.
This is breath, only breath, Think it over midnight! A fly weighs twice as much.
The struck match nods as it passes, But when I shout, Its true name sticks in my throat.
It has to be cold So the breath turns white, And then mother, who's fast enough To write his life on it? A song in prison And for prisoners, Made of what the condemned Have hidden from the jailers.
White--let me step aside So that the future may see you, For when this sheet is blown away, What else is left But to set the food on the table, To cut oneself a slice of bread? In an unknown year Of an algebraic century, An obscure widow Wrapped in the colors of widowhood, Met a true-blue orphan On an indeterminate street-corner.
She offered him A tiny sugar cube In the hand so wizened All the lines said: fate.
Do you take this line Stretching to infinity? I take this chipped tooth On which to cut it in half.
Do you take this circle Bounded by a single curved line? I take this breath That it cannot capture.
Then you may kiss the spot Where her bridal train last rustled.
Winter can come now, The earth narrow to a ditch-- And the sky with its castles and stone lions Above the empty plains.
The snow can fall.
.
.
What other perennials would you plant, My prodigals, my explorers Tossing and turning in the dark For those remote, finely honed bees, The December stars? Had to get through me elsewhere.
Woe to bone That stood in their way.
Woe to each morsel of flesh.
White ants In a white anthill.
The rustle of their many feet Scurrying--tiptoing too.
Gravedigger ants.
Village-idiot ants.
This is the last summoning.
Solitude--as in the beginning.
A zero burped by a bigger zero-- It's an awful licking I got.
And fear--that dead letter office.
And doubt--that Chinese shadow play.
Does anyone still say a prayer Before going to bed? White sleeplessness.
No one knows its weight.
What The White Had To Say For how could anything white be distinct from or divided from whiteness? Meister Eckhart Because I am the bullet That has gone through everyone already, I thought of you long before you thought of me.
Each one of you still keeps a blood-stained handkerchief In which to swaddle me, but it stays empty And even the wind won't remain in it long.
Cleverly you've invented name after name for me, Mixed the riddles, garbled the proverbs, Shook you loaded dice in a tin cup, But I do not answer back even to your curses, For I am nearer to you than your breath.
One sun shines on us both through a crack in the roof.
A spoon brings me through the window at dawn.
A plate shows me off to the four walls While with my tail I swing at the flies.
But there's no tail and the flies are your thoughts.
Steadily, patiently I life your arms.
I arrange them in the posture of someone drowning, And yet the sea in which you are sinking, And even this night above it, is myself.
Because I am the bullet That has baptized each one of your senses, Poems are made of our lusty wedding nights.
.
.
The joy of words as they are written.
The ear that got up at four in the morning To hear the grass grow inside a word.
Still, the most beautiful riddle has no answer.
I am the emptiness that tucks you in like a mockingbird's nest, The fingernail that scratched on your sleep's blackboard.
Take a letter: From cloud to onion.
Say: There was never any real choice.
One gaunt shadowy mother wiped our asses, The same old orphanage taught us loneliness.
Street-organ full of blue notes, I am the monkey dancing to your grinding-- And still you are afraid-and so, It's as if we had not budged from the beginning.
Time slopes.
We are falling head over heels At the speed of night.
That milk tooth You left under the pillow, it's grinning.
1970-1980 This currently out-of-print edition: Copyright ©1980 Logbridge-Rhodes, Inc.
An earlier version of White was first published by New Rivers Press in 1972.


Written by Sophie Hannah | Create an image from this poem

Symptoms

 Although you have given me a stomach upset,
Weak knees, a lurching heart, a fuzzy brain,
A high-pitched laugh, a monumental phone bill,
A feeling of unworthiness, sharp pain
When you are somewhere else, a guilty conscience,
A longing, and a dread of what’s in store,
A pulse rate for the Guinness Book of Records -
Life now is better than it was before.
Although you have given me a raging temper, Insomnia, a rising sense of panic, A hopeless challenge, bouts of introspection, Raw, bitten nails, a voice that’s strangely manic, A selfish streak, a fear of isolation, A silly smile, lips that are chapped and sore, A running joke, a risk, an inspiration – Life now is better than it was before.
Although you have given me a premonition, Chattering teeth, a goal, a lot to lose, A granted wish, mixed motives, superstitions, Hang-ups and headaches, fear of awful news, A bubble in my throat, a dare to swallow, A crack of light under a closing door, The crude, fantastic prospect of forever – Life now is better that it was before.
Written by Pablo Neruda | Create an image from this poem

Gentleman Alone

 The young maricones and the horny muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
Like a collar of palpitating sexual oysters
Surround my solitary home,
Enemies of my soul,
Conspirators in pajamas
Who exchange deep kisses for passwords.
Radiant summer brings out the lovers In melancholy regiments, Fat and thin and happy and sad couples; Under the elegant coconut palms, near the ocean and moon, There is a continual life of pants and panties, A hum from the fondling of silk stockings, And women's breasts that glisten like eyes.
The salary man, after a while, After the week's tedium, and the novels read in bed at night, Has decisively fucked his neighbor, And now takes her to the miserable movies, Where the heroes are horses or passionate princes, And he caresses her legs covered with sweet down With his ardent and sweaty palms that smell like cigarettes.
The night of the hunter and the night of the husband Come together like bed sheets and bury me, And the hours after lunch, when the students and priests are masturbating, And the animals mount each other openly, And the bees smell of blood, and the flies buzz cholerically, And cousins play strange games with cousins, And doctors glower at the husband of the young patient, And the early morning in which the professor, without a thought, Pays his conjugal debt and eats breakfast, And to top it all off, the adulterers, who love each other truly On beds big and tall as ships: So, eternally, This twisted and breathing forest crushes me With gigantic flowers like mouth and teeth And black roots like fingernails and shoes.
Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

The Ambition Bird

 So it has come to this
insomnia at 3:15 A.
M.
, the clock tolling its engine like a frog following a sundial yet having an electric seizure at the quarter hour.
The business of words keeps me awake.
I am drinking cocoa, that warm brown mama.
I would like a simple life yet all night I am laying poems away in a long box.
It is my immortality box, my lay-away plan, my coffin.
All night dark wings flopping in my heart.
Each an ambition bird.
The bird wants to be dropped from a high place like Tallahatchie Bridge.
He wants to light a kitchen match and immolate himself.
He wants to fly into the hand of Michelangelo anc dome out painted on a ceiling.
He wants to pierce the hornet's nest and come out with a long godhead.
He wants to take bread and wine and bring forth a man happily floating in the Caribbean.
He wants to be pressed out like a key so he can unlock the Magi.
He wants to take leave among strangers passing out bits of his heart like hors d'oeuvres.
He wants to die changing his clothes and bolt for the sun like a diamond.
He wants, I want.
Dear God, wouldn't it be good enough to just drink cocoa? I must get a new bird and a new immortality box.
There is folly enough inside this one.
Written by Anne Sexton | Create an image from this poem

Oh

 It is snowing and death bugs me
as stubborn as insomnia.
The fierce bubbles of chalk, the little white lesions settle on the street outside.
It is snowing and the ninety year old woman who was combing out her long white wraith hair is gone, embalmed even now, even tonight her arms are smooth muskets at her side and nothing issues from her but her last word - "Oh.
" Surprised by death.
It is snowing.
Paper spots are falling from the punch.
Hello? Mrs.
Death is here! She suffers according to the digits of my hate.
I hear the filaments of alabaster.
I would lie down with them and lift my madness off like a wig.
I would lie outside in a room of wool and let the snow cover me.
Paris white or flake white or argentine, all in the washbasin of my mouth, calling, "Oh.
" I am empty.
I am witless.
Death is here.
There is no other settlement.
Snow! See the mark, the pock, the pock! Meanwhile you pour tea with your handsome gentle hands.
Then you deliberately take your forefinger and point it at my temple, saying, "You suicide *****! I'd like to take a corkscrew and screw out all your brains and you'd never be back ever.
" And I close my eyes over the steaming tea and see God opening His teeth.
"Oh.
" He says.
I see the child in me writing, "Oh.
" Oh, my dear, not why.


Written by Howard Nemerov | Create an image from this poem

Insomnia I

 Some nights it's bound to be your best way out,
When nightmare is the short end of the stick,
When sleep is a part of town where it's not safe
To walk at night, when waking is the only way
You have of distancing your wretched dead,
A growing crowd, and escaping out of their
Time into yours for another little while;

Then pass ghostly, a planet in the house
Never observed, among the sleeping rooms
Where children dream themselves, and thence go down
Into the empty domain where daylight reigned;
Reward yourself with drink and a book to read,
A mystery, for its elusive gift
Of reassurance against the hour of death.
Order your heart about: Stop doing that! And get the world to be secular again.
Then, when you know who done it, turn out the light, And quietly in darkness, in moonlight, or snowlight Reflective, listen to the whistling earth In its backspin trajectory around the sun That makes the planets sometimes retrograde And brings the cold forgiveness of the dawn Whose light extinguishes all stars but one.
Written by Delmira Agustini | Create an image from this poem

Nocturno (Nocturne)

SpanishFuera, la noche en veste de tragedia sollozaComo una enorme viuda pegada a mis cristales.
  Mi cuarto:…Por un bello milagro de la luz y del fuegoMi cuarto es una gruta de oro y gemas raras:Tiene un musgo tan suave, tan hondo de tapices,Y es tan vívida y cálida, tan dulce que me creoDentro de un corazón…    Mi lecho que está en blanco es blanco y vaporosoComo flor de inocencia,Como espuma de vicio!  Esta noche hace insomnio;Hay noches negras, negras, que llevan en la frenteUna rosa de sol…En estas noches negras y claras no se duerme.
  Y yo te amo, Invierno!Yo te imagino viejo,Yo te imagino sabio,Con un divino cuerpo de marmól palpitanteQue arrastra como un manto regio el peso del Tiempo…Invierno, yo te amo y soy la primavera…Yo sonroso, tú nievas:Tú porque todo sabes,Yo porque todo sueño…    …Amémonos por eso!…    Sobre mi lecho en blanco,Tan blanco y vaporoso como flor de inocencia,Como espuma de vicio,Invierno, Invierno, Invierno,Caigamos en un ramo de rosas y de lirios!              English    Outside the night, dressed in tragedy, sighsLike an enormous widow fastened to my windowpane.
    My room…By a wondrous miracle of light and fireMy room is a grotto of gold and precious gems:With a moss so smooth, so deep its tapestries,And it is vivid and hot, so sweet I believeI am inside a heart…    My bed there in white, is white and vaporousLike a flower of innocence.
Like the froth of vice!    This night brings insomnia;There are black nights, black, which bring forthOne rose of sun…On these black and clear nights I do not sleep.
    And I love you, Winter!I imagine you are old,I imagine you are wise,With a divine body of beating marbleWhich drags the weight of Time like a regal cloak…Winter, I love you and I am the spring…I blush, you snow:Because you know it all,Because I dream it all…    We love each other like this!…    On my bed all in white,So white and vaporous like the flower of innocence,Like the froth of vice,Winter, Winter, Winter,We fall in a cluster of roses and lilies!

Written by Robert William Service | Create an image from this poem

Insomnia

 Heigh ho! to sleep I vainly try;
Since twelve I haven't closed an eye,
And now it's three, and as I lie,
From Notre Dame to St.
Denis The bells of Paris chime to me; "You're young," they say, "and strong and free.
" I do not turn with sighs and groans To ease my limbs, to rest my bones, As if my bed were stuffed with stones, No peevish murmur tips my tongue -- Ah no! for every sound upflung Says: "Lad, you're free and strong and young.
" And so beneath the sheet's caress My body purrs with happiness; Joy bubbles in my veins.
.
.
.
Ah yes, My very blood that leaps along Is chiming in a joyous song, Because I'm young and free and strong.
Maybe it is the springtide.
I am so happy I am afraid.
The sense of living fills me with exultation.
I want to sing, to dance; I am dithyrambic with delight.
I think the moon must be to blame: It fills the room with fairy flame; It paints the wall, it seems to pour A dappled flood upon the floor.
I rise and through the window stare .
.
.
Ye gods! how marvelously fair! From Montrouge to the Martyr's Hill, A silver city rapt and still; Dim, drowsy deeps of opal haze, And spire and dome in diamond blaze; The little lisping leaves of spring Like sequins softly glimmering; Each roof a plaque of argent sheen, A gauzy gulf the space between; Each chimney-top a thing of grace, Where merry moonbeams prank and chase; And all that sordid was and mean, Just Beauty, deathless and serene.
O magic city of a dream! From glory unto glory gleam; And I will gaze and pity those Who on their pillows drowse and doze .
.
.
And as I've nothing else to do, Of tea I'll make a rousing brew, And coax my pipes until they croon, And chant a ditty to the moon.
There! my tea is black and strong.
Inspiration comes with every sip.
Now for the moon.
The moon peeped out behind the hill As yellow as an apricot; Then up and up it climbed until Into the sky it fairly got; The sky was vast and violet; The poor moon seemed to faint in fright, And pale it grew and paler yet, Like fine old silver, rinsed and bright.
And yet it climbed so bravely on Until it mounted heaven-high; Then earthward it serenely shone, A silver sovereign of the sky, A bland sultana of the night, Surveying realms of lily light.
Written by Anna Akhmatova | Create an image from this poem

Willow

 And I grew up in patterned tranquillity, 
In the cool nursery of the young century.
And the voice of man was not dear to me, But the voice of the wind I could understand.
But best of all the silver willow.
And obligingly, it lived With me all my life; it's weeping branches Fanned my insomnia with dreams.
And strange!--I outlived it.
There the stump stands; with strange voices Other willows are conversing Under our, under those skies.
And I am silent.
.
.
As if a brother had died.
Written by Osip Mandelstam | Create an image from this poem

Insomnia. Homer. Taut canvas

 Insomnia.
Homer.
Taut canvas.
Half the catalogue of ships is mine: that flight of cranes, long stretched-out line, that once rose, out of Hellas.
To an alien land, like a phalanx of cranes – Foam of the gods on the heads of kings – Where do you sail? What would the things of Troy, be to you, Achaeans, without Helen? The sea, or Homer – all moves by love’s glow.
Which should I hear? Now Homer is silent, and the Black Sea thundering its oratory, turbulent, and, surging, roars against my pillow.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry