I Can't Get No Sleep

Perturbed and queasy, frayed and raggedy

My senses galvanized, unjustly jammed.

Immoveable

Glazing bleary-eyed at incandescent light

Melatonin gazumps,

malfunctions

The harshness metamorphoses into persecution

Fidgeting in and out, hour after hour, dusk to dawn, reruns run

Tossing and turning, my white sheets crumple,

mutating into altered shapes and states

Tangled and twisted, depicting a frantic mind

The covers entangle me, as my agitation stoically obeys

Fumbled frustration fuses a heavy weariness

Pendulous and fragile, a limp broken biscuit,

fatigued from the loss of sumptuous sleep,

savagely stolen by an evil incubus thief.

Tick tock, I watch the clock

Insomnia, sleep deprived

Denied by impoverished insomnolence

Defied by slumbered incontinence

An anguished edginess ferments into turbulence,

discombobulated bewildered bafflements

My need for sleep becomes an excruciating feat

Discomposure and exasperation,

traps and catches my bittered thoughts

My head pounds, a hurried train

Steamrolling prayers and breath meditation

An impediment and bitter pill to swallow

Silent tears, wild and uncaptured,

the ache and torture, as my body wrestles

Every position feels unworthy

But suddenly, out of nowhere, for a minute or for an hour,

Awareness has disappeared, and at last,

PEACE

∞

*Poem published in my poetry chapbook and available at Amazon UK and US here

© Chantal Weiss 2025. All Rights Reserved

∞

“At least a couple of weeks

Since I last slept, kept takin’ sleepers

But now I keep myself pepped

Deeper still, that night I write by candlelight

I find insight, fundamental movement, uh

So when it’s back this insomniac take an original tack

Keep the beast in my nature under ceaseless attack

I gets no sleep

I can’t get no sleep”

Faithless — Insomnia, Lyrics