I have always treated sleep like surrender.

This poem came from the point where exhaustion becomes ideology.

Sleep will loom like a shadow

Screaming about my abandonment

Sleep will lurk and cast dreams over my daylight

It will take what it cannot get back

I will always refuse

My body crumbles

It’ll lower the light

Without asking its master

I’ll give sloth a solution

Replace it with precision

Install a needle into my ecosystem

That votes amphetamines for me

Every few hours

Stimulate instead of surrender

I will lie down once a week

In a sarcophagus

and pretend to be forgotten

The rest of it’s cycle

My casket shall remain open

Students once tried to evict sleepfrom its very genome

They brought their own gears and tools

small enough to fit into a pencil

important enough to alter the future

they were told

this is not medicine

It is ideology

They were the ones evicted instead

Sleep won the battle

And I still have to negotiate with my nervous system

Sloth will call my unwavering obligation

Compliance

Thank you for reading nocturne - this was rejected by a poetry publication. What do you think?

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