How Poets Sleep

 Our minds don't stop,

         They tread a perpetual treadmill

Un-ordinary tragedies crowd out

          Other emotions

Like hope or light fading

          In bitter interaction...mutual attraction

Conversations that will never cease

          Stories unwind

While we lie between sheets

           Anxious, prostrate

Because we aren't what we want

                     To be

      And we will never be.

              What we want to be

Tragedies in brooding nights.

         Hovering...a figure

Stands stoically in the doorway

         Staring, standing

          He's not real...

But we must keep our eyes closed

          And fool ourselves

Because we fear fatigue

          And tomorrow

Hasan Maruf teaches language and literature in Baridhara Scholars Institute and writes poems and fiction.