Night Dread by Michael Keshigian

He dreaded the evening respite,

desperate to sleep yet reluctant to surrender.

Unable to relax, the muscles in his body twitched,

bones creaked as he tossed side to side,

at times bolting upright in panic.

He fantasized the need for someone

to douse his face with sand,

blur his eyes to their wild wandering

out the window, into the dark

where his mind staggered in and out of consciousness,

rising then falling

under the weight of the midnight sky.

The stars blinked incessantly

and the clouds, in enormously detailed grayness,

played an all night game with the moon.

Through early morning the nightmare failed to yield.

If he could only rid the sky

of the moon and clouds,

spot paint the stars black,

his brain might cease its wander

through the gardens of life,

his ghastly gaze at flowering circumstances

that bewildered him.

And then there were the dead,

memories of those

who once tended the bloom,

their shadowed faces withered

upon the stems

along narrow paths of past reality,

making the journey unbearable

even as he pleaded

with the pallbearers of slumber

to rise from the vacant darkness

and carry off the dead weight of his insomnia

in an empty coffin.

Michael Keshigian’s thirteenth poetry collection, The Garden Of Summer was released April, 2019 by Flutter Press. He has been widely published in numerous national and international journals, recently including Red River Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Oyez Review, Bluepepper, Muddy River Review, Smoky Quartz and has appeared as feature writer in over twenty publications with 7 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations. (michaelkeshigian.com)