Amphetamines for the Nervous System (Sleep Won the Battle)
demons chase me in my sleep
I have always treated sleep like surrender.
This poem came from the point where exhaustion becomes ideology.
Sleep will loom like a shadow
Screaming about my abandonment
Sleep will lurk and cast dreams over my daylight
It will take what it cannot get back
I will always refuse
My body crumbles
It’ll lower the light
Without asking its master
I’ll give sloth a solution
Replace it with precision
Install a needle into my ecosystem
That votes amphetamines for me
Every few hours
Stimulate instead of surrender
I will lie down once a week
In a sarcophagus
and pretend to be forgotten
The rest of it’s cycle
My casket shall remain open
Students once tried to evict sleep
from its very genome
They brought their own gears and tools
small enough to fit into a pencil
important enough to alter the future
they were told
this is not medicine
It is ideology
They were the ones evicted instead
Sleep won the battle
And I still have to negotiate with my nervous system
Sloth will call my unwavering obligation
Compliance
Thank you for reading nocturne - this was rejected by a poetry publication. What do you think?
I swear I would never sleep if I wasn’t always so damn tired. I love the “they were told this was not medicine, it is ideology”