Insomniatic Poet

We're past the 48 hour mark now. My sleepless nights have left me shuddering quite literally. Today I read two poems. I'd like to think they were ready, finalized, but I'm not so sure, especially with the second one.

Song Bird

Everyone’s head nods
in rhythm and into slumber
with a thump that jars me awake.

My computer screen illuminates:
wrinkled bags hanging eyelids,
hair slopped side ways,
and the one strip of defiance
sticking straight up,
rigid, weird.

Eyes so burned, brown,
and crisp just to betray me;
slouching over tacking ticking
keys punched in to manifest.

But time slips off
darting indexes into tomorrow,
before today even concludes.

For it's light again, says the song bird,
with his two lonely notes; twit then tweet.

Twit then tweet, in stoic melody,
a twit for the sun, a tweet for the moon.
A rhythm so lonely and honest,
the song bird continues through the morning.
The song bird continues through the light

Apology

Mom,
I’m sorry for being a leaf,
I never took root.

And my rigid edges protected
just how I feel from you.

When I drooped
over the lonely branch,
when I shimmered,
sobbing the dew,
when I contemplated,
I’m sorry. I’m sorry
I was being a leaf.

When browning too early,
burning out in the sun,
when bending over fired grasses,
crunching as they browned me out,
when finding comforts under
the earthly elements you hid from me,
I was being a leaf.
I’m sorry.

Leaves forget roots, take flight,
drift from one town to another state
and for being a leaf,
for never taking root,
I’m sorry mom.
I’m sorry.

I need to finish this essay before 5 now. After that I submit myself to sweet, sweet, dreamless slumber.

-Dann