Insomniac
Stress, worry and concern keep me awake.
They nudge my shoulder if I should sleep.
We smoke cigarettes at my kitchen table,
blowing smoke-rings until late morning hours.
They sit in the ashtray giving nasty predictions
of things to come, that might or might not be.
They paint remorse in the wrinkles of my forehead
and draw anxiety rings under my eyes,
with the ashes.
They drape over my review mirror,
on the drive to work, obscuring my view
of suicide drivers trying to crash into my car-
they laugh at near misses
misdirecting my thoughts.
They scamper around my desk
hiding in the paper-clip tray and pencil holder,
sneering, throwing economic facts at me--
the high price of life; the rising cost of funerals,
the fine print in insurance contracts,
telling me how poor the company is doing
while tossing little sprinkles of feat on my keyboard.
“Downsizing –you are next!”
They pronounce.
Even at Sunday mass, I see them peaking-out
from under the little white envelopes
in the collection plate, screaming at me --
“You can’t buy your soul back;
never will you buy it back!
Never; never!"
I confess my fears to my priest;
advice from the Bible is given,
“Birds neither sow nor reap nor gather
yet, your heavenly father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they?”
I close my eyes to sleep and find an image
of a well nourished Falcon, splitting, striking -through air
with a lifeless, broken, bleeding Dove
in his talons.
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