Insomnia

Seize me, goddess of night,
Tear me out of time’s inching progress,
The slow, painful drip
Of second, minutes, hours
Counted out in worry and regret,
Passing like chained prisoners
Shuffling in endless procession
Step by slow and measured step
Toward distant dawn

Swallow me, beast of darkness,
Rip me from the prison of myself,
Poison me with dark dreams,
If that is your price,
But carry me from this wakeful hell
Through oblivion and forgetting
To sleep’s empty fields
Where thought is blotted out
And there is nothing.