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No Rest, No Sleep
From my mouth I cussed
All around the smoke
Reminds me of dust
Panicking I choke
I scream and it's not for ice-cream
Everything is black
Waking up, I realized it's just a dream
I go for a snack
Not said sweet sick treat
Ice-cream is not for me
Exiting my suite
Can't let the dream be
Looking at salty dark chips
Can taste the ash in my mouth
My stomach craps up and flips
Now I have cottonmouth
Feels like my, head stops, starts
Fear settles in, janky spurts
No harmony is, helping with this art
I, am trying say, my being hurts
In the past, the pay was good, the blood was bad, guilt
There were people who didn't take kindly
In the dust that the new old bad guys lit
Explosions! The smoke hits fast, blinding me
All around are rocks, red made into bits
I can taste the dust
I can smell the smoke
My life is a bust
Wish it was a joke
Snapping out of it, I decide not to get fed
I sigh
Instead, turning around I go back to my bed
I cry
All around the smoke
Reminds me of dust
Panicking I choke
I scream and it's not for ice-cream
Everything is black
Waking up, I realized it's just a dream
I go for a snack
Not said sweet sick treat
Ice-cream is not for me
Exiting my suite
Can't let the dream be
Looking at salty dark chips
Can taste the ash in my mouth
My stomach craps up and flips
Now I have cottonmouth
Feels like my, head stops, starts
Fear settles in, janky spurts
No harmony is, helping with this art
I, am trying say, my being hurts
In the past, the pay was good, the blood was bad, guilt
There were people who didn't take kindly
In the dust that the new old bad guys lit
Explosions! The smoke hits fast, blinding me
All around are rocks, red made into bits
I can taste the dust
I can smell the smoke
My life is a bust
Wish it was a joke
Snapping out of it, I decide not to get fed
I sigh
Instead, turning around I go back to my bed
I cry
This mostly went over my head. There's some kind of physical peril, but I'm not sure whether it's a dream or just an exaggeration of the narrator's dilemma over whether to get a snack. Maybe he's suffering some PTSD? He seems to have a hatred for ice cream but I don't have any context for why. Some of the commas are extraneous, and I can't tell whether they're in place to force a certain rhythm. They didn't seem to be. The title makes me think he's losing sleep for being hungry but getting no rest due to trauma, and I can't tell if the two are being conflated.
The grit is in my mouth
And haze is in my eyes,
Reach to north and south,
But take it as it lies.
Something smooth as cream,
Nourishing as wheat,
Wriggly as bream,
It's quite a varied treat.
After fitful sleep,
It's time to start the day
Something new to keep
With breakfast on the way.
And haze is in my eyes,
Reach to north and south,
But take it as it lies.
Something smooth as cream,
Nourishing as wheat,
Wriggly as bream,
It's quite a varied treat.
After fitful sleep,
It's time to start the day
Something new to keep
With breakfast on the way.
From this, I'm picturing a traumatized person waking from a nightmare. But not all the way - they're still half trapped in haunting memories.
They know they're in a dark place, and I particularly liked how they try to make light of it - the ice cream bit alone would've clashed with the overall mood, I think, but the "My life is a bust / Wish it was a joke" lines turn it into a piece of the whole.
Rhythm-wise the poem felt disoriented at times - which fit really well, in my opninion. For me, that worked best in the lines from "Feels like my, head stops, ..." to "... the blood was bad, guilt"
In that section, I read commas as brief pauses, which added to the effect. I didn't in the rest of the poem. Wouldn't have felt right.
Maybe a tiny bit of that disoriented feel also came from the lack of full stops between sentences, but I think that mostly made it confusing. In a way that felt like it wasn't deliberate and didn't add to the overall picture.
They know they're in a dark place, and I particularly liked how they try to make light of it - the ice cream bit alone would've clashed with the overall mood, I think, but the "My life is a bust / Wish it was a joke" lines turn it into a piece of the whole.
Rhythm-wise the poem felt disoriented at times - which fit really well, in my opninion. For me, that worked best in the lines from "Feels like my, head stops, ..." to "... the blood was bad, guilt"
In that section, I read commas as brief pauses, which added to the effect. I didn't in the rest of the poem. Wouldn't have felt right.
Maybe a tiny bit of that disoriented feel also came from the lack of full stops between sentences, but I think that mostly made it confusing. In a way that felt like it wasn't deliberate and didn't add to the overall picture.
I presume that the speaker is one of "the new old bad guys". Maybe that's why he/she turns away from ice cream, and in general has compunction indulging in a snack (besides the association of salt and dust). That's a pretty heavy theme, and something that puts the reader right in the senses of the afflicted. It gets a bit lost in the rubble, though. A fair portion of this poem is trying to get across that this person is distraught, but that is clear enough where you could bring in more of their concrete experience.