STAY UNDER YOUR SHEETS

all these great poets

were bedridden

beyond and before

Keats and Proust

all sleepy-headed whiners

lying supine

on the whitest of sheets

softens the teeming brain

for ripe foggy thoughts

hair upon the pillow

wide and small

brushed aside

renews the white vessel

red coughs cannot undermine

the snowy world

of rising jagged ridges

of shadowed rivulets

completing the foundation

for rocky, runny thoughts

in this haven for shiftlessness

when to read

is only to write

as time is still

amongst the shafts

of the tiny Himalayas

the squirm

we can call a movement

within the discipline

of hospital corners

and the wondrous white

of no-further

yoked by white

these three layers

the dull patchwork

that sighs mediocrity

and takes no prisoners

of ambition

of fame

only the occasional sock

or a particle of dead skin

a tall order

for the gown

of a virgin

(First appeared in Crack the Spine, Issue 4, December 2011).