Sleepless, sleepless, sleepless. Not again, again;
Sleepless, again. Sleepless for the fifth night running. I get up, throw
Myself into the day, stopping at the kitchen sink to paint my face with icy
Froth. Each day, in the mirror, that face smeared a bit more brutally
Across the glass. Why bother anymore? It’s the new, the broken, the shattered,
The Cubist me I’ll carry out into the world. All those pieces shifting across
The field of vision, the sloping plane of my skull. The day itself shattering
As a single cardinal in the bare pyracantha shrub cocks his head
Suspiciously as I approach, no doubt guessing
I’m some raw beast out of Picasso-ville. So, I ask you, Why bother
At all? Those pieces of the self—night after night—shaken in the silver
Martini moonlight of insomnia, dream-terror, rage electric along the bones,
Stomach twisted like a rag (twisted, twisted, twisted) in Athena’s wet hands…
So, why? she’d ask me, looking up across the breakfast table, every day before
She left, So why even bother at all?