Wide Awake and Sleepless

The Laws of time seem elastic In the long insomniacal night That expands into an eternity With no end seemingly in sight. It’s half past Wednesday week By the real world’s steady clock But in the land of the sleepless A time check can bring a shock. Although it seems so many hours Since you looked to check it last In the strange fugue of insomnia Just forty second have passed. Bleary eyed and wakeful Almost begging for sleep Each long expanded moment Is enough to make you weep. The clock clicks back to normal When it’s finally time to rise To go and face the world Through sleep deprived eyes, Fighting off that urge to doze Until that longed for hour when It’s time crawl back into bed and Snap back to wide awake again. And, amazingly, inexorably, inevitably It’s once again next Wednesday week Yet it never seems any nearer to that Blessed sleep oblivion that you seek. And the laws of space and time Seem at will to contract and expand As they hold a body in their thrall In wide wake and sleepless land.