BROTHER OF SLEEP

An alarm screams out a warning, but it is too late.
I am reluctantly stolen from my slumber,
Body & Mind heavy-laden already from the insurmountable weight
of wakeful consciousness, as, brooding, groggy & sullen,
I am hurled back unto the barren, unmerciful landscape
of that world which insidiously creeps, & toxically seeps beneath the thickened skin
and its many dark, hidden crevices, an all-too-deluminant light
of encumbrant expediency & sense-ability.

And who is the keeper of this House?
Neither Mother, Father nor Lover nor any of our earth-woed kin,
but the Brother of Sleep, avaricious & ever-omnipresent,
as we weigh the costs of Survival while Life itself extorts without us.

The work gets neglected & we soon come to see,
that there is no tenable way to stop the accounting without expending all
of the red ink to remind us our debits.
Yet the Overseer has still kept us intact, and we are at least reassured
that as long as there is blood running hot & quick beneath the skin,
the books shall remain in balance, & we, fatally noble & upright in our figurings,
until the costs of Survival reach their final recompense,
and the keeper of the House decides that he can live in indigence with us no longer,
sending the Brother of Sleep to keep us-
that mortal friend, enemy & forbidden lover of the Life we had so carelessly spent,
trying to preserve.