#poetry-for-sleepless-nights

[dbaydenny]

Ink of a lost night

flowing past the realm of sleep

passing ticking hands

making its way into lines

daylight could never produce.

.

D W Eldred

[alizahawthorne]

i’ve always been told

that 3am is some haunted hour

where your subconscious thoughts

claw their way into reality

but 4am is the true evil

it’s the unbearable silence

when the monsters in my head

stand at the edges of my vision

to watch me toss and turn

[achlyx]

I always try to keep myself from connecting to my mind, not wanting to let the thoughts consume me with confusion, sadness, disappointment, self-pity, and many more emotions I'm trying to run away from.

[mkaugustpoetry]

@flashfictionfridayofficial prompt for the week: Under the Night Sky

Under the night sky,

You look more alive than ever.

I wake up shaking to your soft snoring,

(It's not really that soft but I'm just relieved to hear you breathing).

I dragged myself kicking and screaming out of that dream,

Literally screaming,

And you're just snoring.

So alive, under the night sky.

Street light glow coming in through the window.

I'm in the shadows,

Huddled for warmth.

But you're right beside me,

Glowing with the street lights,

Peaceful and so very alive.

Isn't sleep supposed to toe some invisible line with death?

Or is it that space between asleep and awake,

Where you could fall through the cracks if things line up just right, slip right into the afterlife.

Either way, I feel like I just leapt over that crack,

More like a canyon,

Only to find you safely on the other side,

Under the night sky,

More alive than I've ever seen you before.

I don't know what to believe,

As I listen to you snore.

But under this night sky,

Stars blurred by the window,

And you alive by my side?

It doesn't matter much anymore.

[emmalf4]

tonight i feel really hungry

not for food, but for soul

[sherryfizz]

Sometimes I stay awake until midnight, I stare at the dim moonlight, count every star in the sky, but still then I can't sleep because you're the reason why, I could spend hours thinking of you, hours that become sleepless midnights, adoring every inch and ounce of your soul, you're just way to good to be true.

Why should I spend time in my dreams when then awake I still picture you here, you weaken my bones and my head becomes unclear, I can spend an eternity looking at the infinite darkness of the night, but I could spend another thousand sleepless midnights wishing you alright.

The mere thought of not watching you by my side makes my heart ache, but if it's you it's better than a heart break, my eyes feel weary but I still can't take a rest, but why rest when you're making my heart beat out of my chest, now as I write this at one in the morning, I can conclude this can be one of more sleepless midnights where you're the one I'm yearning.

Sleepless midnights

Where the mere thought of your special other leaves no room for rest.

[vetometo]

a gray symphony

It echoes, you know

The silence in the empty space

Can't call it silence at all, not really

When it rings in your head so persistently

Have you ever lain in bed and listened to it?

That song it writes, all by itself

Stretching time until you're not sure how many verses it's been

Have you found yourself, there between the quivering beats?

Existing

Just that, existing

No more, no less, a gray area where you *are*

Or not, it depends

You're not quite sure what form you take there either

What your hand would look like as you stretch it towards the ceiling

Schrödinger had a point, after all

We can't make sense of the boundaries we can't percieve

Even as they pound in our ears, no matter their fury

Does it settle somewhere between your ribs too

Occupy the space your lungs were supposed to fill

That emptiness, the absence

Of something, you're certain, but what could it possibly be?

Come on, silence, speak to me

Chatter away, you're free

Tell me how to breathe again

Before I forget completely

[woundedheartwithin]

Sunday “Six”

(shitty poetry edition)

Tagged by @passthroughtime @overdevelopedglasses and @mike----wazowski

—

So many memories I wish I had.

Things I’ve forgotten,

not much worth remembering, anyway,

One moment blurring into the next,

Sightless and tasteless and dull.

Tintype dreams and wishes

Curled into the edges of film not worth preserving,

Pressed between pages of a notebook bought when I felt alive

Enough to hope for something better. Water damaged.

Blue ink weeping into the grain of the paper.

The image is pressed there,

A negative engraved into the fiber,

Ghosts cast in hazy relief, iron grey.

Forgotten.

Like everything else.

It’s on a shelf somewhere,

Maybe in my mind, maybe somewhere real,

Sea-green spine tucked between paperbacks

Cracked with age and handling,

Just like everything else.

Well loved or well used?

Maybe both, maybe neither.

Maybe weathered by humidity,

Untouched for so long not even the cracks remember.

Dust along the shelf before,

Damp along the wall behind,

Books pressed all the way back,

Denied room to breathe but breathing still,

Expanding— growing— as the pages wrinkle.

Water damaged.

Old and creased and forgotten.

Hazy memories still slipping into cracks,

Ferrous. Lifeless and thoughtless and guileless and less and less and less,

Fading until even the ghosts can’t remember their own names.

God, I wish I knew their names.

But years have passed, and I can’t remember anything,

Let alone the names of faces pressed into pages,

Settled somewhere between old flowers and autumn bruised leaves

And a weak heart beating into the ink and the fiber

Like it was born there.

Born to be forgotten between water damaged pages,

Like everything else.

Just like everything else.

[dbaydenny]

The length of nighttime

gaining on the far morning,

becoming a thief,

its empty promise complete,

finally passing at dawn.

.

D W Eldred

[how-the-feathers-have-fallen]

hurry up and move already I miss laying on the side of the road dying with you

and (i’m) lying on the side of the slide on the spectrum that enhances this ruse

i’m stealing all the conversations you had with your friends. i’m taking the wheel from the shell of the spare you left in my neighbourhood dead-end.

too scared to enter my own room, too scared to walk up the stairs, too scared to sleep (in my own damn bed). held hostage there by the secrets i tuck like milk teeth under my head.

got a spare pair of wings? they probably don’t fit but i found another cliff and another fragment of me to fling.

you gotta stop collecting them, salt crusted off the shore, when they wash up stuck. they’re starfish not sea glass. gotta throw me back in or the feeling in my chest is gonna dry up.

[therandomwritings]

“i lay here as i decide whether i fell in love with you or just those moments…”

I spend nights thinking of what I really feel, doubting everything and hold myself accountable for allowing this doubt to slip through, surely if it was true I would have no doubt but I guess this is inevitable because you can never truly know what anyone feels...

(IG:@_.therandomwriter._)

[writermask-0807]

icarus and the sun (and if you can’t love me, burn me, please.)

and if you are the sun

(and don’t you shine so blindingly bright?)

i will love you like icarus

careless, reckless, breathless

and

laughing, bright and beautiful

for a split second

soaring on these burning wings,

melting wax weeping down this sun-kissed skin

mournful, maybe

because loving you, dearest

or perhaps loving at all

is the sweetest nectar, the cruelest poison,

and i eagerly drank from your lips

like a greedy lover

but-

like icarus and his wings,

this ebbing euphoria can only fly me so high, for

i was always bound to fall and

burn

at your slightest touch

[kinda-poetry]

sleepless night (#1?)

the biggest thing that i can’t admit is that some part of me still wants to be with you, even if i know it won’t work. loving you unconditionally, regardless of how you hurt me, is a bad habit that i can’t seem to break. last week, i read an old paragraph that i wrote in the spring. it was about how i’m still holding on to us, despite the pain you’ve caused me and the fact that we’re over. there is one thing that i can’t let myself think too much about and it’s the fact that if you say you love me tomorrow, i’d run right back into your arms. one quote from that months old paragraph still rings true: “my needs are your needs until you need nothing from me.”

[littleteapotghost]

Up a long twenty-four

Only down for six

And I

Skipped the stuff

That lets me think

Left me flipping through

memories

Of empty halls

Scrawling words l can't read

On the bare, bare walls

Like all those screen-bright Inscriptions

Made of sugar and dye

Turn the world upside down

With a dog Latin sigh

But I guess

I

Keep getting

It wrong

And I don't know why

[catharticranter-blog]

yesterday

i went to class

in hopes of seeing you

yesterday

was your birthday

i was missing you

it’s december

another winter is passing by

without getting to see you

in your winter wear

[distancivg]

the past few days have felt like a dream

a mix of sleepless nights that bleed into day and long days that creep along with the promise of sleep at the end

but it's too hard to wait until night and sleep comes too early

restless.

it's not time yet and the body knows it

it jolts awake.

but the weight is too heavy and the pull of sleep wins again

at least for a little while.

until everyone else has disappeared into their own dreams and there's no one left to the fill the silence

but now sleep won't come and left alone with only thoughts, restlessness and anxiety take over

overthinking fake scenarios,

crying over what hasn't even happened,

overspending online and starting new projects,

imagining all of the things that life could be.

day dreaming at night