Five Haikus about Sleep

The human memory is an amazing thing. I'm certain we went through the same thing with Gabe, but, for some reason, my brain has blocked all memories of the absolute sleep deprivation parts of getting him through his first year (and, really, it was a full year before we could get anything like a full night of sleep with him--and even now, he still wakes up at 5:00 in the morning, which is, in my opinion, unreasonable. Nobody but newspaper delivery people and prostitutes should be up at 5:00 in the morning (and the prostitutes should just be packing it in for the night about then).

Over the past few weeks, though, I've grown to reappreciate my bond with sleep. At the best of times, my relationship with sleep is tense and a little forced. My body clock is set for sleeping between 1:00 in the morning and about 9:00. Obviously, because the world is set up to function between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m., my body has never really gotten along with the world at large.

Anyway, whatever. I am sleep's bitch, that's what it boils down to. And, now that I'm not getting regular amounts of it (Libby and I each got about 12 hours of sleep in a 72 hour period), I'm noticing it even more. So, I decided to sum up the last few weeks of sleep deprivation in haiku form. Why haiku, you ask? Because the haiku is the perfect poem for one reason and one reason only: it's short. So, here goes.

Note: understand that these haikus are directed at sleep, and not my children. They can't help sleeping the way they do, so I hold only the necessity for sleep responsible at this point.

Sleep, where have you gone?
I'm lost without your embrace.
Stop fucking with me!

It's 5 o'clock now,
We are all awake again,
Stop fucking with me!

Four hours of sleep
Isn't enough for a day
Stop fucking with me!

My stomach burns,
My brain aches, my eyes are blurred,
Stop fucking with me!

Stop fucking with me!
Fucking stop fucking with me!
Stop fucking with me!

As a series, I think it's rather beautiful. The language might be a bit risque, but that's the thing with poetry. It's visceral. And by that I mean, I can say whatever the hell I want to and blame it on the reader if it isn't well received. The beauty of poetry.

Feel free to embroider some samplers with these haikus on them. They are bound to impress your dinner guests and it has to be better than seeing another "God Bless This Home" sampler.