Weekly Poetry Challenge Five

Mysteries of the Night

Mysteries of the Night

Every night
At 0 dark hundred
The bewitching hour.

Sam Adams
Is awaken
By the mysteries of the night.

As the wild things
Of his dark imagination
Take over.

And he enters
"The Twilight Zone"
"The Outer Limits"
A "Black Mirror Universe."

Overcome
By insomnia blues.

He stared at the ceiling.
That stared back at him
With an evil grin
Mocking him, it seems.

His mind plays an endless tape
of fears, doom, and endless worries
As he goes down the proverbial rabbit hole
Lost in an endless anxiety
Feedback freak out loop.

The latest dark SF series he saw
The latest scary news
Political dystopian futures
Endless possibilities play out.

The latest news of the war
the latest fears of incipient fascism
The latest news about the stock market
climate change, weather disasters
Monster storms and flooding
His town burning up around him.

What if I have the big Alzheimer’s
or dementia?
Or a stroke

What if I have Cancer,
Covid,
Lyme disease,
or Monkeypox?

Or an accident,
or a plane crash,
or terrorist incident
Or my wife dies
leaving me all alone
Can I even cope
with that nightmare scenario?

What if World War Three breaks out?
The North Koreans invade
Nuclear bombs vaporizing
Everything in sight.


4:30 a.m.

What if I am at the mall
When a mad gunman opens fire?
Or a terrorist bomb goes off?
Or I am the victim
of a random act of violence?

5:15 a.m.

What if the zombie apocalypse starts?

5:17 a.m.

Time comes to a crawl

Tick tock tick tock

5:30 a.m.

What if, what if, what if……

6:30 a.m.

Until day-break blasts him awake
as the dawning sun fills the room.

Ending that night’s insomnia blues.
lost deep in the night mysteries.
Until the next night’s
episode begins
at O Dark Hundred.


Note: O Dark hundred hours is a military/intel slang phrase that refers to the hours just before dawn between 2 am and 5 am depending on location and time of year, This is when bad things happen in the night, as military and intel special forces wake up for a dawn operation Here and in other of my similar poems and short stories, it refers to when people most often have nightmares around 3 a.m. in the middle of the night or O Dark hundred.

Prompt/Week # 33


Use this title for this weeks poem:

Mysteries of the Night



Poem should be inspired by the prompt/image in some way
A minimum of 12 lines, no maximum
There are no form requirements
Your submission must be newly written for this week's prompt