Dead Zones of the Night

I waste the night in wakefulness
starting at simple shadows,
smiling at stories my heart tells my head,
worrying at tasks of this day, not yet born,
re-living the unburied failures of yesterday
wearing away the sheets with my restlessness.

It’s four a.m. again - morning still sleeps,
dawn is far from the horizon,
though the night struggles in its death throes
then is grave still, crushed by the three a.m. seizures
and wrapped in the silence of time frozen
unvisited by even a passing ghost.

Constellations of debris hold the darkness close
fading pinpoints of light mark dreams awake
and wishes unspent, while the world sleeps on.
These are the dead zones of the night
where I, weary from my ill-considered musings
take out my pen to refold the crevices of thought…and write

The morality of my past haunts me at this hour,
catching me in the clutches of uncertainty
turning my thoughts over as if on a new formed grave,
uncovering and exposing the worms of history
while burying the rationality of tomorrow.
The mist of confusion always comes at four a.m.

Within the dead zone of night, at this time
the creative juices of paranoia and exhaustion
mingle together to form new pathways for thoughts.
The muse of madness or genius unresolved is enhanced,
fermenting into some things wondrous and terrible
that dissipates in the cold glare of morning.