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Can't Get to Sleep

Ludy Bührs

Free verse
This sleep terror of mine
I could kill the bitch
It is as unwieldy
as this chicken
being butchered

Without a head, up she flies
to blindly drop on my just
sheets-freed braincase
and there she starts to irritate

The headstrong wretch
sprinkles my skull with her late feathers
snitches my peace of mind and
doesn’t even want it for itself

So I spastically potter about for hours
in these bales of duvets
with my body muttering
till my blood boils annoyed

Eyes pinched, I then finally
succeed to bring down
the spooky token

But my poor feathered skeleton,
each morning, seems to be broken
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Submitted by ludy_b on November 22, 2021

Modified on May 04, 2023

34 sec read
13

Quick analysis:

Scheme XABCX DXDX AEXX EDXX BXC CC
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 595
Words 114
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 5, 4, 4, 4, 3, 2
Full analysis for Can't Get to Sleep »

Ludy Bührs

The topics she writes about are very diverse, so are the poetry styles she applies. As a Dutch translator and poet, having lived in Cambodia's capital city Phnom Penh for 2.5 years, in 2008 she published "Op de ruïnes van een rijk" (On the Ruins of an Empire) ISBN 978-90-8834-483-1 with 60 poems based on her experiences there. In 2007 she received a Certificate of Accomplishment as one of The Best Poems and Poets of 2007 issued by poetry.com and the International Library of Poetry for her poem Choked Truth, her own translation of "Verstikte waarheid", one of the poems in the book. Born in 1956, she still works as an independent translator, translating from English into Dutch. more…

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    "Can't Get to Sleep" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/114442/can't-get-to-sleep>.

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