Posts tagged ‘insomnia’

January 6, 2016

MOLON LABE

by jhon baker

here we are at two in the morning

2.16 to be precise

and sleep is in the past and far from me now

I eat Reality Sandwiches

and drink coffee, black, out from a chipped mug

 

I seem to be the target of spam lately

and with this I admit to the digital age

fully with handheld computers

and online dictionaries and

the classic writers thesaurus

 

and I read Bartlett’s book of anecdotes

to substitute for any actual experience

which is a lie

though I sleep away in relative safety

next to a loaded revolver

 

MOLON LABE – out from my cold dead hands

and of course I speak of poetry

long looks and bedroom post-coital whispers

it is not enough that the sun should rise

in a few hours but that the moon is full

 

 

– Hoc Scripsi

August 16, 2015

am not asleep

by jhon baker

been awake too damn long and I’m sick of it.

nothing to do with the cup of coffee I just poured myself in one of my Vincent mugs.

I suppose it isn’t that late but I am hungry and looking for my angry fix.

I haven’t been sleeping well.

and the windows have faces that I can’t comprehend.

I put on my goggles and peer out into the darkness of the backyard sitting next to my wife who is equally as perplexed as I am but today I did not forget my medications.

I still feel the world spin and note the stench of cigarettes and dying sunflowers.

better than earlier when I could scent out the unique putrefaction of several birds finding only one feather.

but the couch got moved.

generally enervated and bone pain sick of it.

half-banana moon, toothpicks on the highway, sick of it.

skin falling off and miswriting sin, a lack of croutons in soup, sick of it.

tattoos, assassinating public figures, the FBI comes and visits me at six am, sick of it.

or I am in stir, a padded room with nothing but this white computer and the insatiable need to sleep.

or I am in a wheat field with crows thinking about a .38 special.

or I am in bed, lying prone, ready to fire with a hard-on and magazine dreams.

add a new category.

eleven: forty-six pm – my eye lids are heavy and I am over tired.

goodnight.

goodnight.

goodnight.

September 28, 2014

Can’t sleep

by jhon baker

I’ve been restringing guitars and inspecting all of them to see which ones need to go to the luthier for a check up. Listening to Jazz and wishing everyone was awake and I had a flugelhorn to play certain songs, maybe I can learn to play flugelhorn and trumpet at the same time out different sides of my mouth. – why not – most people speak that way.

I’m not getting to where I want to be fast enough and I know that this is just me being hard on myself. I no longer want to participate in anything that isn’t directly related to my art. This isn’t the time to criticize my life or measure my successes. Nobody can see themselves by the drear light of five in the morning.

I am typing by the light coming from off my screen. Touch typing with several mistakes. It is a good test to see how my skills have progressed. I would practice guitar but I am not wearing shoes. This is an important part of it and I will not explain.

I am a waste of a human right now and not tired at five am but I must sleep soon regardless. Even if the clowns get me.

July 20, 2014

Wait… wasn’t this a poetry blog?

by jhon baker

Why, yes it was and is- when I write poetry but lately the focus has been elsewhere and I’m okay with that. I have not been focusing on my disbelief in any god or gods but have been playing music again and seriously studying to become a better musician. Mostly Jazz Trumpet and reading music – Trumpet is a new thing for me as of last October and I am coming along with it as well as can be expected I think – maybe even better than can be expected as this is where all my creative energies lie. You may think it a shame that I am not posting more poetry regardless of what I am writing – there is surely more poetry written than I’ve ever placed on this blog and if you had that thought then you thought correctly and it isn’t as if I haven’t written since I started with the trumpet but I haven’t written much and am waiting to see what of it gets published elsewhere before it lands here.

This is a meditation on the blog in recent light of the most popular post I’ve ever written – far and away the most popular post and I need to consider what this blog is really about as I’ve never really wanted a random blog but one that held out meaning and a constant theme – more or less.

So, I will put a poem here for the followers that are with me for the poetry –

 

speaking of hell

 

this is one poem that will not get written

not everyday can contain a poem

or the written word

or the vague ramblings and ideas

of abstracted madness.

 

my beard grows long

and I am in good company,

months of tender care

with shampoo and conditioner

with little gray.

 

I am younger than I look

and more experienced than the color of my hair.

it’s resilience, perseverance

it’s sitting down and getting to it –

keeping hell in a back pocket.

 

most people live truly blessed lives

their nightmares kept safely at night,

others don’t sleep and howl at the moon

raving like sharp toothed dogs

gnawing at their own fingers and bones.

 

– Hoc Scripsi

 

And put this here for the randomness of it. I don’t think the article needs comment from me but you should know that it is sorta about vaginas – or one particular vagina and it isn’t mine.

September 6, 2011

my own private Elgin, Illinois

by jhon baker

 

the sun is setting now and the leaves aren’t still but luminous, vivid greens and some reds.

verdant splendor of intense color shaded by a myriad of others and backed by intense whites and pinks of gravel driveway.

All images blur and skip frame to frame like an old 8mm.

 

2. (and then again)

all the colors become brilliant and to know what it means.

I gave god the better odds on this one.

loaded a single cartridge into a six-wheel and spun.

my own private Elgin, Illinois,

images blur and frame skip to slow

an old 8mm film

alighting the spirits of

Jack Daniels and Johnnie Walker

an unfinished life

and the poetry of John Berryman.

 

– Hoc Scripsi

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