6.14.2023 - Somnambulance

6.14.2023
Somnambulance

Who am I when I sleep?
When my eyes close?
When the world sweeps onward?
While I lie unknowing in slumber?
What if I start talking?
Confessions wrapped in somniloquy,
Perhaps I have a guilty heart,
Or I fear the damage my subconscious could do,
Without the sharp prison of my teeth,
To keep my wayward tongue safely stilled.
I've gone walking in my sleep.
I once microwaved an entire head of lettuce.
We still joke about it,
A hearty guffaw at the silliness.
But I feel ice slither down my spine,
Because I don't know why.
I don't even remember the sensation,
Or the time I woke up with a bar of Zest in my mouth,
The clear indents of my teeth.
Was it a dream I do not recall?
It is a strange absence from myself,
Unmoored from the logical ticking of my mind,
Adrift in unconscious potential.
Madness is more knowable,
Then the raw intensity that animates my slumbering body,
And walks me forth into unclean mystery.
Who am I below my daytime civil shell?
And who does the moon inspect,
While I lie wrapped in unconsciousness,
Swaddled by my blissful absence?
Truly few things are as implacable,
|As a sleepwalker with imaginary destinations,
And all the time in the night.