Sleep, Where Are You? Poem by Charles Julian Hyett

Sleep, where are you?

You chastened, illusive, guileful, evasive state of being, engaging submission to your exacting demand. When will I reach the place where you gather me up and carry me over that transient threshold for my subconscious journey? Sometimes close, mostly far to an ever moving point of departure and beyond without direction or knowledge of how the journey will evolve. Your mischief fails to fetch me from my pensive mood where illusions dance deranged in my minds eye with frantic urgency as lunatic wiles misplaced and uninvited. Irrelevant imposters parade the stage performing replays of enlarged simplicity to gargantuan form, they show regrets, guilt, sorrow, remorse and plans all forcing their way to the front - demanding space and justification to dance before me so that you are shielded from me in your hiding place, Thoughts sliding here and there, up and down, back and forth and side to side, tormenting, rewarding, saddening, delighting, soothing. Please immerse me in your beguiling state, engulf me in your mysterious web.
Ok, you win, not this time……… we are not ready. Another wave of ideas on another level washes over me with a hot sweat saturating my being. Release me now and calm my heartbeat, still my pulse to a duller pace, grey the vivid tones and blur the vision. Allow my deranged nerves be calmed of tensions by your softening wiles to drift on a tide of calmness and leave these fears behind.
Is this where we meet, is this the moment I slip under your spell? No you are gone again demanding further renditions of playful mind-games. My tiredness presses me to find you but you are not there. Don’t leave me here in this semi-conscious state abandoned feeling, waiting to be already away, a desolate place alone with these thoughts to do with me as they will. Remove these fears, let me slip into your care where you mercifully guide me through our eventful flight through the void of transition, championing the dawn as it glides over the pillowcase and brings me back to a more rested place, still, calm completion.
Ah Bliss! Suddenly you have caught me up! Now saturating my being, I am swiftly swept away and up, in a blink - together we drop into my journey of…..sleeeeeeep….…………………..……………….………………………………………….. steeped under your spell at last.