The Rest Song

Let us rest then, you and I
When the sun sets across the sky
Like a person draped across a bed
Let us amble along our way
The stumbling fray
Lead us to our lethargic state and dozens
Of sleepless nights on discrepant cheap bedsprings

Oh, do not ask “what time is it”
Let us go and sleep solicit

In the room a women cries
Talking of her baggy eyes

The yellow sun that slowly ascends the window panes
The yellow taste that lingers on the window-panes
Licked my mouth sluggishly tasting last evening
Lingered around the fragments of my cot’s broken frame
Slipped through the door, made a languish leap
And seeing that is was a warm July night
Curled once around the bed and fell asleep

There will be time
For the posturepedic bed that I imagine in my room
There will be time, there will be time
To fall asleep on that bed
While counting sheep

In the room a women cries
Talking of her baggy eyes

In a minute there is time
For resting and dreams that will be forgotten

For I have tried before, Oh I have tried
I have seen doctors, experts and a shrink
I have taken their advice of what they think
So when shall I begin again
And what do I do?

During the afternoon I sleep like Calpurnia before his death
Nerves shaken like a child watching a horror movie
Too tired to move, I exist
Stretched here on the floor like a dog
Should I nap, rest or sleep
I have the strength of jello
Though I have tried again and again
Though I have spent countless night awake
I am a tired sloth who cannot sleep

I have heard them snoring past the sheets
With tangled hair and baggy eyes
But my eyes are open and darkness will not fall

About: I wrote this for a class assignment in 2007 based on The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Theme: tired, languid
Vague Allusion to Kellogg’s Corn pops “Big yellow taste”