He is a good baby, it was a good quiet birth and he went straight off to sleep.
Oh sick and queasy, all mouth and the smell of sick, a stomach rocking as baby rocks, oh so sick, and too full and too empty, and hungry and wet and smells and oh smells and dark and light, dark and light, one and two, the three is me. And
He is a good baby, he sleeps all the time.
I struggle up clutching and fighting away from the sick rocking stomach, the smell of sick, I fight and clutch and roll and roar immersed in a hell of want, I must have, I must have, I must have, oh rise on your two legs then, I must rise and walk, walk anyhow and any way and any way up and away from this I must, I want, but they rock me, hushhhhh, they croooon me, shush, they knock me over the head with sleepers, soothers, syrups, drugs and medicines.
Be a good boy, baby, and go to sleep.
Oh I sleep, down among the dead men, wrapped in cocoons of warmth, all belly and wet stinking bum, I must wake, I must wake, I know there is something more awake than this, I know I have to be awake and be, but
Be a good baby, Ill rock you to sleep,
He is a good baby, he has always slept a lot,
He is a good baby, he doesnt give any trouble,
He is a good baby, and he has always slept the night right through.
I run and crawl and all the worlds my oyster, I touch and finger and sniff and taste and a streak of dust on the floor is a wonder, and sunlight on my skin is a continent and light is and dark is, and dark is for remembrance, behind there is a door, I came in at there, pulsing, pulsing, one and two and I makes three, and now is a million-textured light changing as the day changes, light the wonder, light out of dark, and oh let me smell and grow and find and fight but
Be a good baby and do keep still
Hes such an energetic baby, he wears me out,
Sleep, baby, for good Lords sake!
Cant you ever keep still,
You used to be such a good baby.
He is a good baby, and he has always slept the night right through.
I run and crawl and all the worlds my oyster, I touch and finger and sniff and taste and a streak of dust on the floor is a wonder, and sunlight on my skin is a continent and light is and dark is, and dark is for remembrance, behind there is a door, I came in at there, pulsing, pulsing, one and two and I makes three, and now is a million-textured light changing as the day changes, light the wonder, light out of dark, and oh let me smell and grow and find and fight but
Be a good baby and do keep still
Hes such an energetic baby, he wears me out,
Sleep, baby, for good Lords sake!
Cant you ever keep still,
You used to be such a good baby.
Pushed back into sleep as I fight to emerge, pushed back as they drown a kitten, or a child fighting to wake up, pushed back by voices and lullabies and bribes and bullies, punished by tones of voices and by silences, gripped into sleep by medicines and syrups and dummies and dope.
Nevertheless I fight, desperate, like a kitten trying to climb out of the slippysided zinc pail it has been flung in, an unwanted, unneeded cat to drown, better dead than alive, better asleep than awake, but I fight, up and up into the light, greeting dark now as a different land, a different texture, a different state of the Light, I lie in dark and recognise Night but
Sleep, child, why arent you asleep?
He gives me trouble, he never wants to sleep.
But Im up and on my feet and running and a discovery of the tones and sounds of Light is my day with sleep and bed waiting to catch me by my heel and drag me down down down, and in the day, they say, when I rage peevish and restless, with tiredness the enemy overcoming the discovery, the wonder and the delight
Lie down and sleep, lie down and rest
Be a good boy now and sleep awhile.
And when night comes and Im struck with anger again that tiredness undoes me, again and again, or struck with rage because Im still awake and still got far to go, the gleam of light on a leaf a signal and the drip of rain a most potent drum
Oh do go to sleep now baby, it is time for sleep,
For Gods sake give me some peace and quiet,
For Christsake sleep.
And alone in the dark and out of the way I shout and shake my bars and at last I sleep so that they love me, I sleep, I learn to sleep.
He is such a good boy, hes sleeping well.
He doesnt give me nearly so much trouble now, hes
stopped being so wakeful.
Thank God, hes asleep.
Im off to their school now and Im learning to be good.
Im a good boy now, I am quiet and good.
One and one are two
And the third is Me.
Me half beaten back into dark, me quietened, regulated, time-tabled, a nuisance tamed, me the obediently sleeping.
But back in the dark in the deep of my mind is where I know quite well the door is, back or forward, up or down, beyond the Boooom, shush, the eternally boooooming, the pulse, the beat, the one and two, the one and two, through there, who knows which or where I do. I know. I remember. Do I remember? Yes, I remember. I must remember. There. Where?
The little white days flicker faster faster, flick flick flick, on and off, white with the slices of dark between, the days for living, and the nights for
Sleep.
He doesnt sleep well doctor, he needs a pill.
The small days flicker and the nights are killed dead with Pills. But he sleeps well, he is healthy and regulated and good.
And now the greatest drug of them all, the sweet dream, sweet night dreams and sweeter day dreams, I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair and wide-apart legs like loving arms.
And now Im grown and gone, and I work and play all regulated ordered and social and correct, and I sleep now less than I ever did in my life for this short brief blissful time, just away from that bed the family, before I become that feather bed the family, and Im young and my dreams and living are all one, white arms around my neck and I drown, I drown, she and I, he and I, down among the dead men. Down.
Oh doctor can you give me a pill to make me sleep. Oh, Im working too hard and Oh, Im worried about my marriage, and oh Im worried about my job, and oh I cant stand what I think. Oh give me a pill and give me a drink and give me a smoke and give me dope, give me enough food to knock me silly, give me now everything I had when I was baby, give me what you trained me to need before I even talked or walked, give me anything you like, but let me SLEEP for in the dark where the door once was (but is it still?) is the place I can tolerate being alive at all. I never learned to live awake. I was trained for sleep. Oh let me sleep and sleep my life away. And if the pressure of true memory wakes me before I need, if the urgency of what I should be doing stabs into my sleep, then for Gods sake doctor, for goodness sake, give me drugs and put me back to dreaming again.
And now life is wearing thin and as it reaches the end the drugs are wearing thinner, less life for loving, less room for food, less stomach for drink, and sleep is harder to reach and thinner, and sleeping is no longer the Drop into the black pit all oblivion until the alarm clock, no, sleep is thin and fitful and full of memories and reminders and the dark is never dark enough and
Give me pills, give me more pills. I MUST SLEEP.
No, I dont enjoy my nights reading thinking talking and simply being alive, no, I want to sleep, I have to sleep.
In a long narrow ward where sixty old men in charity pyjamas are put to bed like infants for the night at nine oclock by institution nurses, the nurse goes around, with sixty doses of SLEEP.
SLEEP WELL.
In the outpatients of a million hospitals, in the consulting rooms of a million million medicoes, a million million million hands are stretched out,
Doctor give me pills to make me sleep.
SLEEP WELL.
As the earth revolves, one half always in the dark, from the dark half rises up a wail, oh I cant sleep, I want to sleep, I dont sleep enough, but give me pills to make me sleep, give me alcohol to make me sleep, give me sex to make me sleep.
SLEEP WELL.
In mental hospitals where the millions who have cracked, making cracks where the light could shine through at last, the pills are like food pellets dropped into battery chickens food hoppers, SLEEP, the needles slide into the outstretched arms, SLEEP, the rubber tubes strapped to arms drip, SLEEP.
SLEEP, for you are not yet dead.
I must wake up.
I have to wake up.
I can feel myself struggling and fighting as if I were sunk a mile deep in thick dragging water but far above my head in the surface shallows I can see sunlanced waves where the glittering fishes dance and swim, oh let me rise, let me come up to the surface like a cork or a leaping porpoise into the light. Let me fly like a flying fish, a fish of light.
They hold me down, they cradle me down, they hush and they croon, SLEEP and youll soon be well.
I fight to rise, I struggle as if I were a mile under heavy sour black earth and above the earth slabs of stone, I fight so hard and I shout, No, no, no, no, dont, I wont, I dont want, let me wake, I must wake up, but
Shhhhhh, hush, SLEEP and in slides the needle deep and down I go into the cold black dark depth where the sea floor is an earth of minute skeletons, detritus from eroding continents, fishes scales and dead plants, new earth for growing. But not me, I dont grow, I dont sprout, I loll like a corpse or a drowned kitten, my head rolling as I float and black washes over me, dark and heavy.
He is sleeping well, doctor, yes, he is resting well, yes,
he is very quiet, yes, he is no trouble at all.
But I must wake up.
But I am tied hands and feet, I am wrapped about and around with strands of seaweed from the Sargasso Sea, and I roll helpless on the ocean floor, down among the dead men, and my eyes are blacked out, sleep is heavier in me than the need is to wake and fight.
I must wake up.
Doctor he is very weak now. Yes he is restless between shots. Yes, he seems confused, bewildered, unable to feed himself, seems to want to go back to sleep, does not want to wake up, was angry when I said to him, We think you should wake up now.
Nurse how can I wake when you hush me, hush me, hush me, Hushhhhhh, shhhhh, Im down among the dead men, and sweet sleep has dreams that daylight never knew, better to sleep where the dreams may come and visit, sweet promising dreams, marvelling visitors from there who know and tell that behind (or before) and down (or up) is the door up and out into the sweet light of day.