{ Sylvia Plath: Insomniac. }

Insomniac
by Sylvia Plath

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue --
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

{ oh, but think twice; that's my only advice. }

OH GOD WILL THIS APPRAISAL NEVER BE DONE? There was a crazy number of referrals this morning, in part because I took yesterday off; in part because the inbox isn't emptied summarily, which it should be. Whatever. Not my job. But anyway, that took all morning, and then I spent all afternoon writing my self-eval, which is still not done. I'm almost there, but the further I get through the mandatory section, the more asinine the questions become. "What prevents you from fulfilling your potential?" Stupid paper exercises like this one, I would fucking assume.

--

Let me tell you about this morning. I woke in a bad mood, had three - count 'em! - verbal skirmishes, and then my brain proceeded to fall out of my nose. I bled for a very long time, and I still don't really know why. I'm guessing it's the heat, but it's so rare for me to get a nosebleed at all. Anyway: crankypants ahoy.

THEN. Oh boy. Then, I missed the bus at the train station, which is pretty typical, so I ran to the other bus stop (the bus has to go one way to the bus station, then double back onto the ring road to take its actual route, which gives me time enough to catch it some place else), was there for three minutes, saw the bus at the lights, held my hand out... and then got stared at by the arsehole bus driver as he merrily went straight past me, that fucker. Then I walked back to the train station to catch the next bus, and pretended not to cry. Son of a bitch, I will stick him with velcro, goddamn.

My whole day pretty much followed in this vein. Whatever. Tomorrow is Friday.

--

LOLOLOLOLOLOL FEMGEN IS DUE IN JULY WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT.