Jonathan Horvath

Ad-Seg Insomnia

Sleep doesn't want to be taken

but I want to take it & wrap it

around my head, smother thoughts & stop

sheets from twisting right off the bed.

I'm losing the battle with sleep.

I know I must have blood-shot eyes

and more dark-blue bags than Paris

has pink ones on a trip to Miami.

But I don't know for sure--

I have no mirror

unless of course I count the dim

reflection in the stainless steel

lav/comode combination, oh,

when the light's just right I get a dark

image in the surface of the water

above the P-trap in the bottom of the bowl.

Yet all I can really see there is the heavy

beard shot through with grey.

Much as I despise facial hair, I

can't see my way to using communal

electric clippers in a prison where

HIV/AIDS patients reside.

Therein lies another weapon of the

elusive sleep:

my itching face.

And will the committee release me?

And why didn't I do this instead of that?

And why won't that crazy dude shut up?

And will the committee let me go?

And sheets

get tied

in knots.

Breakfast

I remember keeping journals on my night stand

rolling over anytime an idea hit & rolling

a pen across the page; stopping

whatever, whoever I was doing & making sure

maybe not poetry, maybe not even

philosophy got written down, just

something flowing to keep ink flowing

to keep ideas fresh & sizzling, boiling

in the full of their fragrance--

Empty cupboards & rusty pans of hunger,

neglected poetry; I don't know, has it become

too much work? Too much concern?

Why do I lie & let ideas fly

covers pulled & closed tight & whole poems

recited, not written, not remembered,

happen only once . . .

gone & the saltine cracker poetry

has become somewhere . . .

crumbs in the bed.

Jonathan Horvath was born January 17, 1967 in Santa Cruz and raised by Peter and Diana, a working-class couple who made story time a nightly enrichment of imagination. He credits his creativity to his parents and a childhood in the country. His work also appears in CitySearch 7.