2: 22 A.M. Poem by Butch Decatoria

Is it insomnia
when I don't care for sleep?

The sort of sleep that is belligerent
interruptions at each half past
in the middle of every hour,
intervals of interlopers
awoken by invisible passersby
floating enemies striking me
with the hatred of their kinesis
cerebral lightning at my heart
or attempts at my suffocation
as I wake to a coughing start,
intruders invading my dream mind
as well as its peace

anything that would hurt me
they revel in my breaking,
I can hear the clicking of laughter
Their teeth...

Desert and city
should have crickets… no?
yet Vegas feels like its been dying
the quiet now replete
no chirp of the lucky bugs
nor busying of bees with their buzz
rather its the fizzle of neon panic
the beatitude of cheats
the machinations of gamblers' defeat

or sometimes mostly
this deep in the twilight
a swarm of Ninjas, Suzuki, Kawasaki
Harley roars
toward their kabuki room foot rubs

a twenty gets you a dub
rub you long time
for an hour behind red doors

Try to spank myself to sleep
if not to exhaustion,
but I can still hear the distant piercing
screaming
of latter days & soy-lent green
the secret war as alien is to any sound
sleep.

They look like people…
we look like meat,
the living dead
their artifice & pale flesh
all torn away and beaten

up like faithful lovers that creep
seduced by the sluice
of the street / symphonies,
of rocket ship Discovery

Can't turn the volume down
in the black of night
when my mind's eye
is behind a veil
in the dark of 2: 22 a.m.
(in recovery)
and still the aliens
wretchedly wail...
whilst i'm
slumming in attempts at slumbering,
the Grays are watching
humans lumbering
and whoring in the dark @
2: 22 a.m.






(If I fall to sleep, is it still Morning
When there's no light to speak of?)