Your Dead Sleep

When your ghosts 
put their guns 
to your head
as you wake,
chanting your faults,
grinning your fears,
how you slept
the night before
might save you.

Get yourself coffee.
Get yourself breakfast.
Get settled in
upon the couch,

close your eyes,
chant SHUT UP
SHUT UP until
at last, silence.

Still, their guns
press your temples
so don’t relax.
Take heart. Breathe.
Sleep will return
with dead comfort
later. Hold on.

On nights when
sleep fails you
and the ghosts
await you after?
Hell days, those.

You itch and 
nod and snarl
back at them,
or you hide,
head buried away,
if you can. 

You’ll sleep hard
when sleep returns.

You hate them,
those armed ghosts.
They define you,
limit you, exist
because of you.
You lose sleep 
because of them.

Whenever you don’t,
they smile broader,
cock those pistols,
take their time
taking your time
until it’s time
for dead sleep.