The best way to catch a dagger in your back is to sleep on your side
the sheets didn't make sense
the pillows felt like parking meters
spiders weaved webs backwards
leaving nothing to dream upon
so many empty ceiling corners at dawn
but all things change if you wait:
you start to drift, start to settle in,
start to fall asleep, fall away,
make up minds, pack bags,
escape, slow and staggering
and the greatest sleep of all is waking
to a cool winter morning once
the fever has broken and no one is
left to hear the echo
yet now there is another reason
for insomnia:
someone is in your spot
but even if you returned
the sheets would pull away
the pillows would harden
the spiders would burrow into
plaster and hide among the insulation
and retch and retch
it doesn't matter whose legs sidle
along mine at night: they need to go away
so I can rest easy, curled on my side
armor on the floor, both eyes
closed for once
A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure. James H Duncan is a New York native, a part-time Taoist, and the editor of Hobo Camp Review. A frequent haunt of all-night diners, used book shops, dive bars, and train station platforms, his nocturnal transmissions of poetry and fiction have found homes in Apt, Plain Spoke, Red Fez, Reed Magazine, The Homestead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, and The Battered Suitcase, among many other publications. For more, visit www.jameshduncan.blogspot.com
the sheets didn't make sense
the pillows felt like parking meters
spiders weaved webs backwards
leaving nothing to dream upon
so many empty ceiling corners at dawn
but all things change if you wait:
you start to drift, start to settle in,
start to fall asleep, fall away,
make up minds, pack bags,
escape, slow and staggering
and the greatest sleep of all is waking
to a cool winter morning once
the fever has broken and no one is
left to hear the echo
yet now there is another reason
for insomnia:
someone is in your spot
but even if you returned
the sheets would pull away
the pillows would harden
the spiders would burrow into
plaster and hide among the insulation
and retch and retch
it doesn't matter whose legs sidle
along mine at night: they need to go away
so I can rest easy, curled on my side
armor on the floor, both eyes
closed for once
A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure. James H Duncan is a New York native, a part-time Taoist, and the editor of Hobo Camp Review. A frequent haunt of all-night diners, used book shops, dive bars, and train station platforms, his nocturnal transmissions of poetry and fiction have found homes in Apt, Plain Spoke, Red Fez, Reed Magazine, The Homestead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, and The Battered Suitcase, among many other publications. For more, visit www.jameshduncan.blogspot.com
