Tonight I am bothered by the ticking clock. There must be a trick to counting sheep that I’ve not been told. To resist the nagging noises of a house worn down—its creaking 2-by-4s recite the reasons to keep standing, which may include a wrong one. I’m just the sort of madman to slip down the hall and rewrite iambs into allegories—hey old man poet, old Metronome clock, something has gone wrong tonight, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

outcast sleepwalker
climbing over barbed-wire dreams
into America

Bob Haynes