I find that many of these become sleep poems. I can't help it. So I'm reading Tony Hoaglund's Donkey Gospel, Theodore Roethke's On Poetry and Craft, and John Berryman's 77 Dream Songs. All of these are definitely influencing this.
Also, Galway Kinnell. He's in here. There's something Sharon Olds said about him not being afraid to show us all the rawness of the body. The disgustingness, the fluids we don't speak of. I can't go that far. Or maybe I can and I can't post it here.
Here's this. Also, I've been reading and pondering the Many Worlds theory. Quantum Suicide. Things like that. So that's in there, too.
Before I Wake
When I feel asleep at the wheel,
as you know there are theoried many worlds,
and between mile 94 and 93 two came to exist.
See when I sleep I drop left
onto my arm, into a dead man’s position.
This is a baby learned thing maybe
probably to guard a long gone pacifier.
It’s creased in my bones,
I fall into it like a tent collapsed.
How different would I be as a back sleeper?
I’d be readier,
I could sit up in the night,
not untangle like a spider.
My arms could spring from rest
free, prepped for any bedding woman.
I would study political science.
I would eat balanced meals.
Instead of all blood pooling
in my stomach and penis
causing all dreams to be of hungry sex
or at least interpretable of that,
blood would distribute through my back
giving me daytime posture and purpose
steered by my sleep strong neck.
But I don’t spend nights that way,
I sleep selfish, arms for me,
a pillow too thin to be shareable
nightly and this night especially
I am smashed into darkness.
In one world at least
I never wake up from my baby sleep.
In my world, somewhere between
Coldwater and Hell, Michigan
I sleep a whole mile.
Waking curled into the window,
I see the steering wheel,
steady, making corrections
for me, for some reason
I can’t even guess at now.
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