Circadian Arrhythmia Poem by Niko Tiliopoulos

[poem resubmitted because original was deleted due to profanity! ]

Time is so annoying
when it reminds me I’m late.

My appointment with sleep was
three thousand minutes ago,
but I missed it.

The sun has already had breakfast,
but I haven’t even had dinner yet,
and the only thing that fills me up
is hundreds of grams of tobacco,
though my lungs are not that happy,
while the pills I took last evening
are already looking for some company.

At least them wine bottles
are as soulless as me.

But whom am I fooling?

There is a lecture to give in an hour,
and students expect me to make sense.

Sense of what?

Freud’s cigar and cocaine addiction?
I’ve indulged in them both,
and I still believe Johnny Cash was wrong.

Jung’s archetypal angels?
I met them once but they were stoned
and very reluctant to fly.

Once in Sri Lanka, someone pulled a gun at me
and the only thing I could think of was
‘Why don’t you pull the bloody trigger? ’
But bullets were in short supply.

But now there are no guns to shoot me,
no volcanoes, earthquakes, or tsunamis,
no suicide fanatics to blow up my Bali.

No, for now, I have to live.

Death has skipped me dozens of times,
but there is a greater plan here:

I must make my third double espresso
and drink it straight;
my stomach needs the caffeine pure,
as the Andes have spoiled it.

...sip...sip...sip...sip

This sound reminds me of the butterflies in Guangzhou,
with their schoolgirl-uniforms selling me immortality.
Ha! They must have meant something else,
because I am still growing old.

Well, I tried to shower my sins off
earlier this morning,
but they are Maori permanent.

Anyway, it’s time I went.
Where to?
It doesn’t matter. It never did.
It’s the trip that counts, they say,
and my pills agree.

So, I’ll hop on a cab
and ask it to take me
somewhere,
anywhere,
nowhere,
everywhere...