Dreams In the Bunk

Dreams in the Bunk
By Sy Roth

An aching tired eats away, 
Slurping at his soul 
Yearning wakefulness from the darkness.

He heaved. 
Sigh in a soft world of crimson-waving flowers
Dancing away to his numbers etched on him, his scales.

The others turn, he with them
Intemperate mob 
Waring in fisticuff frenzy with the bedbugs.

Their odor wafts in on the breeze
From the chinks in the poorly built walls,
A pig-sty pen for the downtrodden.

And their snoring, a milk-curdling vengeance
That threadbare cloth could not mask---
A chorus of caterwauling madness.

With it the dawn, still somewhat dark outside,
When permeable reality, aloft on a black steed,
Clip clops them off their boards, swaying under their weight

They disassemble themselves from the nightmare
Like nano-robots clicking off their nerves and senses
To march another day

To the tune, an assembled cacophony of scratching
And hats sweeping from their brows as the others jackboot 
About them in their own jocular way.

Drink and ego made them bold,
And they could pretend to die through their night,
Their own snores a tuneful melody.

While the others dream of respite on their feet
Their muscles scream of the daytime terror
And the beasts feed on their determination to live.
Copyright © | Year Posted 2021

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