Sleep Is Singing In My Ears Poem by Ahmed Maiwada

Sleep is singing in my ears;
Hunched at my rear -
Mozart's million medleys
Are growing unclear;
My consciousness - a lighted cigar,
Steadily disappears.
My eyelids are weighted: pinstripe gaps;
They have waited for too long, then they flap:
It is the rock-sack weight
That gives sleep a bad name,
Not the pour of bedtime kisses;
Not the poor of ragged britches.
Sleep is Ruth and sleep is ruthless,
Shadowing the ant
That charmed, it might see starvation.

2
Sleep is ringing in my ears -
Hushed, blank, deadening verses;
Masses of chained lullabies
Drown my affairs.
My entire being silver-blind
And golden-deaf.
Sleep catches me sitting or lying -
(Who hears the phantom's foot is lying!)
It is the eternal touch
That gives sleep a bad name,
Not the stupor given to reverse;
Not the cadaver of an unfinished verse.
Sleep must observe the needle
On the record;
Touch me one spot at a time,
Then depart when I am sung.

3
Sleep is a needle on a spinning disc.
I am departed if sleep halts.
I am sung when sleep departs.