These Sleepless Nights

Usually my chest feels like a voltmeter.  
        Measuring something untamed and electric.  
The edges of my heart's beats feel twinged with the pain of a coming shock.   
        There is something in me that refuses to rest.

This is a point in time that has played out in multiples, for several years of my life.
This restlessness has become expected companion.
I think what I find most interesting is how much of a ritual it's become.

There are always thoughts.


Most people who get to know me are informed early on that I am constantly thinking.  Many smile and take this to mean that I am a well-enlightened young man.  I smile at this complimentary view.  But few, if any, every really grasp what I mean.  I guess I should say, I am a compulsive thinker.  Right now, as I type this, I'm thinking of far too many things:
          D.H. Lawrence quotes.  A couple of lines from an old Fugees song.
                  Reasons I'm not sleeping.  Badly wanting a cigarette.
          That interesting woman, named Sarah, who I've been meaning to call for days.
              My father. My son.  More reasons I'm not sleeping.
          The fact that if I supposedly hurt my mother's feelings last night, why was I the last to know.
                      Jennifer Egan's writing.  A scene from a Kid Cudi video.
                      Even more reasons I'm not sleeping.
          That other interesting woman, named Toya, who I've been meaning to call back for days.

And all of this came to me within the first turns of my restlessness, so by the time I made up my mind to get up and type this, there were too many thoughts to remember or list.  Movies I've seen.  People I've noticed or talked to.  Blogs I've recently read.  Old poems I find myself quoting.  Songs that I hear playing out in my head.
Yes, as I write this, it has a rhythm, not much unlike my restlessness.  It moves and I move with it.

In these moments, I am a flood, and my mind becomes the dampened streets.  Later on, perhaps when the first flecks of sunlight begin to pour through the windows, I will have surrendered to every thought.  And none of it will interest me the same.  Empty, needy, but somehow at peace, then I will find my sleep.

They say the best fights are always the ones that happen within.

Marcus Jamison, the Rare Poet