Category: Sleep & Dreaming

Nightly Variety Show

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After much wrangling with AI, this was the disappointing result. Somehow approproate for the theme, though…

Nightly Variety Show

What a dream !  What a strange, bizarre affair,
But it’s over now –
For there’s never any going back, to share
That fevered brow.
I’m half-awake, about to drift away,
To somewhere new –
But that whole kaleidoscopic play
Has vanished from my view.
The story wasn’t finished, and will never be,
Its chance has gone –
As I dive into some virgin spree,
Forever bounding on.
And this one too will run a random time,
Then shift and stall,
As my intermissions briefly climb
Above the free-for-all.

Training Neurons

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Inevitably, this image is AI when I gave Chat GPT the poem and asked it for a picture.

Training Neurons

My dreams are like AI –
They’re making-sense in bursts,
But then forgetting what they’ve said.
Over-confident and high –
These yes-men feed my thirsts,
Just to keep me longer in my bed.

All their written words are bees
That simply won’t stay still –
They’re almost right, until they’re read.
They scrape my memories
With a questionable skill,
And they never pay to use my head.

My dreams are like AI –
With their textures not quite right,
And their eyes a little dead.
But still, a riot worth the try,
A playground for a crazy night
Where logic fears to tread.

Double-Dip Sleep

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Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

Double-Dip Sleep

I’ve heard it often said,
That mediaeval folks would fall asleep
As soon as the Sun went down.
And then they’d rise from bed,
Around twelve or one, as the dark lay deep,
From the peasants to the Crown.
And they’d spend an hour or three
Quite wide awake, with nothing to do,
With the fires and the candles out.
And they’d sit, presumably,
As they’d shiver the midnight through,
Awaiting drowsiness, no doubt.

Sleep in Solo

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Dreamers by Albert Moore

Sleep in Solo

We may lie down together,
But we always sleep alone.
Whatever dreams we’re slave to,
We must face them on our own.
When sleep makes heavy weather,
I can hold you till the sun,
But I cannot come and save you,
And there’s nowhere you can run.

The Prayer in the Purr

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The Prayer in the Purr

What do cats dream,
Those tabbies, napping in the Sun all day ?
Are they getting cream,
Or perhaps they fighting with a scar-clawed stray ?
Does it scratch their itch,
Or raise a threat that’s coming out to creep ?
Ev’ry time they twitch,
Are they trembling from a nightmare stalking sleep ?

A cat has no other cats to call for mental health,
It’s up to them alone to learn to wake themself.
Is that why they sleep when the Sun is shining stark ?
As if they’re too afraid to have to lie there in the dark ?

What do we dream,
We humans, snoring to the Moon all night ?
Cheering on our team,
Or racing through our minds from guilt and fright ?
So is it so odd,
If felines fear, and maybe find some faith ?
If cats have a god,
I hope she’s keeping well her clowder safe.

So when they come to humans, just to join us on our bed,
And even though we partly know they’re looking to be fed –
Yet just for a moment, we feel it feel so deep,
As if they’re seeking comfort here to calm their troubled sleep.

Too Many Winks

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Water by John Rowe

Too Many Winks

Some nights, I swear I wake up far more tired
Than when I went to sleep
As if my dreaming mind is overfired
With all the thoughts that leap.
I blame the Moon, who’s too full and romantic,
Sending me his glow –
He makes my nightly visions so gigantic,
Putting on a show.

Some nights, I swear I live a year inside,
Upon my sweated bed.
All Summer long, with blinds and windows wide –
But nothing cools my head.
I blame the Moon, who’s far too round and bright
And keeps my slumbers stressed.
I need to hang some curtains, dim his light,
To get some proper rest.

Brackish Streams

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detail from Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel

Brackish Streams

I’ve always been a weeper in the wind –
It only takes the slightest breeze
To turn-on my capillaries,
As drip by drip, I am chagrined,
And have to whip my hankie out
To stem each overactive spout.

I don’t know why
The weather makes me cry,
Especially the cold.
An eye-jerk sense,
Or anti-drought defence
That will not be controlled.

I’ve always been too salty in the frost –
All the Winter, all those leaks,
To run and freeze upon my cheeks.
So tear by tear, my poise is lost,
Into a sobbing, briny wreck
Who cannot keep his ducts in check.

I don’t know why
My gaze is never dry,
Until my eyeballs rust.
They even seep
While closed and fast asleep,
Then desiccate to dust.

Forget-Full

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Forget-Full

There’s some things I’ve forgotten
That I know that I’ve forgotten –
That I notice where the hole is,
Where the synapses are rotten.
Yet there’s other things, I swear,
I never knew, were never there –
But they clearly weren’t important
As they fall into the air.

Rockabye Lullabye

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Photo by Luci on Pexels.com

Rockabye Lullabye

Sleep now,
I’ll wake you
If something should happen.
Best grab it
As it grabs you,
And blow your light out.
Breathe now
Like beach waves,
Let deltas come lapping,
Enjoy it
While you’ve got it,
There’s some go without.

Sleep now,
I’ll wake you,
But not till the morning.
Best welcome
The dreaming,
And dream one for me.
Breathe now,
Like purring,
Until the new dawning.
Enjoy it,
You’ve earned it,
And it all comes for free.

A Troubled Brow

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A Troubled Brow

The lurgy has broken my sleeping –
Sweated, disrupted, and long.
With headaches and backaches from keeping
A posture my joints say is wrong.
Repeating the same-old distresses
Again and again, like a glitch in the stream –
A nightmare that never progresses,
A scratch in the grooves of a dream.
But the night will pass,
And with it this slough –
It cannot last,
I just have to live it for now.
What once was a refuge is fevered and seeping,
Brought on by this succubus lodged in my chest –
The lurgy has broken my sleeping,
And left me in need of a rest.