"When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am…" –Maya Angelou
I don’t want to go to sleep,
I don’t care how long I take;
You tell me I should go to sleep —
But I don’t want to wake.
Don’t ask me now to go to sleep:
I know the morning, when it comes,
Will be oblivion so sweet,
That to it I gladly will succumb.
So I don’t want to go to sleep;
Because I won’t want to wake.
There’s no escape yet from the fog of sleep
That when the morning comes, I’ll take.
I do not know you well:
We are like strangers passing in the hall;
But when I do see you,
You’re very sweet and not too tall.
I like you very much that way:
You put a spring into my step.
You make me laugh and smile,
Where before I might have wept.
You help me to begin my day;
You help me to pretend
That a bit of you makes it all okay,
And I’ll make it to the end.
So I may not have known you very long,
And I may not know you very well,
But from what little I have seen,
I think Coffee very swell!
I wake with a leaden heart
On a day that isn’t worth the start
And I’d fain watch it all fall apart,
But it isn’t worth the effort.
Instead I grasp at wisps of dreams,
Hoping they’ll hide me from all the things
I do not know, or will not seize,
And will only leave untouched or burnt.
I hear you early in your morning
When it is still my night;
Your day, just beginning,
While I’m still enjoying moonlight.
When the sun at last peers through the window,
It will find me sleeping, turned away
Someplace far where it can’t go;
Thus begins my day!
And there I hunker down and hide
Until it’s safely noon,
So that time will soon be satisfied
And once again give me the moon.
And then at last I live again —
Until the sun decides to end the show;
And my moon leaves me in the end,
Just like every one I know.
The mornings get harder;
The clock ticks on later.
Life is the nightmare,
And sleep is the savior.
I would give anything
Even if it’s a sin
To sleep away forever
This world I’m not in.
You think that you’re a dreamer,
And can dream me from my sleep;
Oh, if only ’twere so easy!
But I’m not yours to keep.
My dreams must be my own:
They cannot be achieved
Through someone else’s efforts,
In someone else’s dreams.
So cross paths with me, Sleeper,
When you close your eyes;
But otherwise, leave me
Until I’m ready for the sunrise.
Writer In Retrospect 