Trapped Awake

Know what it’s like to be trapped awake?

For days on end, hallucinate.

An immense strain upon the body

No falling asleep instead passing out

So damned exhausted one can’t count

Thoughts so jumbled as one mumbles

Can’t make sense of one’s own mind

Speaking to oneself, in search of a sign

Paranoid by now, covering all tracks

Forgetting by this time that sleep one so lacks

Why won’t the mind give one a break?

Why can’t one just sleep for god sakes?

Hating this phase that’s part of the maze

Putting one’s mind in a dangerous craze

Beginning to unlearn the structure of words

Losing the grip for all that one’s learned

Trying to sleep have to keep moving

Don’t fully know just picking and choosing

Anger and rage knowing ones missed

Whatever it was, it left with a whisp

Entertain justification of ones own mind

Accepting sleep is not needed to be fine

As soon as one’s ready to accept this fate

The body collapses under force of ones weight

Awake in few hours, of maybe days later

The game has restarted at the hands of the maker

Four days on end sleep changes perspective

Whole life now altered, thoughts are selective

Resigned to accept that ones destined to be

An advocate for lessons of life’s sweet mysteries

One is only a mere mortal of men

Not strong enough to do it all again

Fate so happened to intervene

Replacing the disorder confusion unseen

A man whose mind just couldn’t sustain

The unseen burden that drove him insane

A shell remains that rocks back and forth

His mind has retreated from perpetual discord

Randy Sturridge