the poem

INSOMNIA
By R Lett

One thirty - Two
Two thirty - Three.
Three Fifteen:
Three thirty - three forty-five
Three fifty six,
seven
eight…
nine…
Four am and I can’t sleep.
Inside my head now – in much too deep,
No way I’m dozing off with all these meetings
and arguments, all these things that go on
in the very busy place I call my brain.

Four Ten:
Half the world has no access to safe drinking water,
but everybody has access to Coca Cola.
They killed Orson Welles.
They crush genius for exposing mediocrity.

Four Fifteen:
They? who is they? am I they?
Never.

Four Twenty Five:
My teasing yawns are like false labour.
Eyelids shut out the darkness.
Bright as a Dallas afternoon beneath my lids.
It was Kennedy that wakened fear to us.
My generation – X, Y , zed, whatever.
Fucking Americans – USA – unlimited supply of assholes.
The Divided States of America.

I was three and a half that November.
Cracked my whole family up
TV repeated footage of his funeral so much,
I said
There goes Kennedy again.
I couldn’t sleep,
that night – a war started,
under false pretenses
on color TV ‘til I was 12.
Charlie crouched in the Jungle
Shit, still only Saigon.
They’re still there – he’s all gone gone gone.
Four thirty three.
They smart-bombed Baghdad one sleepless night when I was thirty
And nine elevened New York when I was forty,
Weapons of mass deception,
Katrian, Rita. Michelle (not a hurricane – my ex-wife)
Tsunami – Bali, and Pakistan,
Rwanda, somolia, bierut, palistine, hastings.

Four forty-eight…
And the telus bill
Four fifty
And the iron is still on
Four fifty four and twenty seconds
I don’t have an iron..
Four

Fifty

Nine

and