O dark hundred

40 lines

O dark hundred

Sam Adams had the insomnia blues
he could not sleep.

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 fears
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 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?
What if I have Cancer, Covid, Lyme disease, or Monkeypox?
What if World War Three breaks out?

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?
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.
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.

this replaces my earlier insomnia blues poems and stories. trying to clean up my portfolio, getting rid of duplicative writing