POEM 9: Coffee Naps

Dread.

And the rusting metal bars of the bunk bed frame greet again

Pay no mind to glistening sunlight and its ambushing presence

Wishfully whispers that outside and inside were never overcast skies

Never stormy nights, never winless fights, just lovely sunrise

Pay no mind to the scorching heat of the late Monday afternoon

Just another humid day of mourning and not a dewy morning of spring

A tense staring game against racing hands and time

Pay no mind to the stench of the stinking bedsheets and leftover laundry

The sweatshop of funky underwear stains, dirty dishes, and dusted closets

The fabric of cobwebs on four corners, the vicious termites on redwood

Pay no mind because none of it

Survives the storm of everyday life

Fed.

With chains snagged upon wounded feet, walk to the crusty countertop

Glass, coffee, no sugar, and drink it hot and fast

And return to the room where betrayed souls repose

Where spirits long gone bury spirits long gone in trowels of toil and doilies with tears

Dead.

And the rusting metal bars, the irony of summer sun and wintered hearts, the stinking smoke

Greet me again

And I see the acres of dearth between what I dreamed life to be and me

But in elusive dreams within quick naps, then chilling hibernation

I feel alive again

Written 13th December, 2021.

Poem copyright © 2021 by Peter Ryuken B. Hermosura, “Coffee Naps”

Author's Annotations

Another poem born from an anxiety episode, Coffee Naps portrays the comfort we find in sleep and the horror we find in waking up. This poem also aims to symbolize chronic depression and massive disorientation that happens after we wake up through vivid visualizations and a play with the lack of pronouns (depersonalization) in the first and second stanzas. However, this poem ends with the narrator sleeping anew, only to wake up again, causing this poem to have a circular structure, a recurring characteristic in most of my poems.

This poem parallels another poem, By the Bed, also displayed in Peter's Poems and Other Peregrinations.