SLEEPLESS.

EL Kamaal

1
The night is a hypocrite: he deprived me of my right to work it as if nothing owns it more than me. I own the copyright of the darker part of the night to my eyes as much as you all, sleeping on your chest. I pray pharmaceutically just to have a kind of peace I can’t live to explain. The kind of peace one experiences through inactivity. I undressed my body into the hand-manufactured air beside everyone’s snoring, and it almost cursed the incompetence of every nature of tranquility.

2
I think my stressed body is the rolling stone:
It kept rolling north and west on the atlas
Of my bed. Music is beautiful to pass the night,
But the sleeping well of my neighbors
Depends on the lower the volume of my need to dance.
What is the purpose of the night
If not for something useful like the ephemeral death.

3
I don’t mind being knocked out—hours or forever—
By the calm fist of the night.
But I care about getting my consonants right.
I care about singing high when the singer sings of the hill.
I care about silence and the meaningful words
Stretching out of my mouth at the dawn of the day
When the fog breathes the new white
Of another interestingly distressing day.
I care about being given my right by the night.
I care about getting laid by the bringer of the stars
To hours of journeying the plain history, unconscious.
I care about, like almost everyone else,
About recognizing my mother’s voice
When the ruggedness of the night lastly fades into memory.