June/03

Sleep of the Dragon

Exhaustion spreads throughout my body, but sleep would not come.
It is this stirring inside that keeps me awake;
Single words that wouldn’t stop spinning in my head;
Ghosts of ideas, translucent and untouchable.
Omnipresent and unyielding, they keep playing with my mind.

The fiery Dragon is crawling, inching forward endlessly.
It is writhing, its hold on me gentle yet firm,
And whenever I reach out, it slips from my grasp.
On its endless journey, its flames light spark after spark –
Too bright to ignore them, too bright to find sleep.

Aware that there is no way to dim those lights inside,
No way to capture the dancing Dragon in a cage,
I force myself to get up and grab a sheet of paper.
Now it is my pen that does the dancing
In a futile attempt to send the Dragon to sleep
              By writing it a lullaby.