SLEEP      

          They say that Macbeth has murdered sleep

                   I wish I could

          I can’t get close enough

          I don’t slip into sleep

                   sleep slips, slips, slips away

          disappearing beyond an ever edgy horizon

          a watery cloud not seen

                   but by sly rumours it is there

          and I believe all rumours

                   or I’d be eye-poppingly awake

                             forever

          or stand eyeless as a hollow statue

                             unseeing and unseen

                             unmoving and unmoved

          all still, no breeze or breath

                             again

DO DREAMERS DIE?

            Do dreamers die?

                        Do dead men dream?

            Lids close the box

                        and lids shut out the light.

            Behind, the flickering eyes

                        invent reality-replacing worlds

            and play, travel, swear and kiss;

            heroes are metamorphosed every second

                        and self is seen as me and someone else.

            But what if you are with the dying:

                        now asleep, now breathless nothing?

            If, at that moment, they are dreaming:

                        How sudden is the stop?

Not Asleep

The shadowed still-life lampshade is familiar.

The object, with its surfaces of tones of grey, is            mine.

Why, then, does it menace in the gentle half-light?

I have woken but am not awake.

I must get up but cannot stand.

In the fearful real nightmares of deep sleep

There is always a safety catch, a backup exit,

A switch to flick into a wide-awake escape.

But I am not asleep and my conscious torment has to be endured

                   with no way out.

Imprisoned in a half-world where skin is metal,

Where you have to count and climb the plastic             duvet hills,

And must, at all costs, conquer and decipher

the third rocky pillow from the left.

The eyes are shut but eyelids see

The pulsating terror of the oh-so-ordinary room.

I long for, dream of, crave desperately for sleep,

But somebody, anybody please, please

                   Wake me up!