What is the alchemy           turning dread into sleep

Waking gouges a map on my mind         brain charting the dark

my heat and meat and rogue militias

After another fried night         I google my brain on insomnia
Experts talk of chronic at six months

I’m saying decades

as gray clouds abound outside
In my brain        the experts say        gray matter is shrinking

Brain scratched       scabbed       waking scrapes

the holly that invaded unnoticed under rhododendrons
on the hill I can’t climb

I keep keeping watch over worries and lists

quotidian and existential

and dream of dreaming        try not to overdose

on magnesium          one more thought to haunt me

The experts say I’m missing trains of thought

the squeal of wheels on steel rails           engines pulling ideas
away from where I’m waiting