The Troubled and Sleepless Mind

In the stillness of a blackened moonless abyss of a night,
Sounds and images scream through the sleepless mind.
Like squealing tires on a race track black and tight;
As continuous as a jack-hammering on an unyielding concrete rind.

Cringing – tossing – turning from taunts the night is rife
With white-knuckled clenching hidden in the night.
The pounding heart beats to a slideshow of life –
Oh for the images to merge to that final blinding light.

But final rest and quietude elude to hateful mocking laughter
Of the captor gleeful in a cat and mouse game with the tormented.
Could this be a game played neither here nor there nor before nor after?
Could, indeed, the sleepless mind be a playground of the demented?

“Come to me; I’ll give you rest”, I hear, with wringing hands now limp.
And with it the ebb of mental effluent, machine-gun images, together unwind
To softer edges, faint and weak – drive the demon, banish the imp!
“Yes, I’ll come.”  and finally ease the troubled and sleepless mind.”

~ib