Plagued by a poem
I cannot sleep
Every phrase in my head is a line
From the One about Ben
The One about Night
The One about the Year I spent near Death
And I toss
     and Turn
And fear lost words on waking
Faded dreams carrying too much with them
The tide ripping poems from me at dawn's incessant chime,
And only the bicarbonate of writing them out
Allows me to expel the dark bubbles from my
mindgut,
Fart out a stanza
     or two
So I can roll over and sleep
Untroubled by the lingering smell of a rhyme,
Metered stench in the bedclothes
For my lovers to wrinkle their noses at,
But smile indulgently, as they do,
For they love me, smells and all.