Counting Sheep

Tick followed tock followed tick followed tock
Like the mechanical heartbeat of Big Ben's time clock
Except this one is small and its wrapped round my wrist
Mechanically timing every toss, every turn, every bodily twist
And as it ticks and it tocks it’s giving me strife
a metronome counting down to the end of my life
But the second hand doesn't tick it gracefully sweeps
around the watch dial as I try to sleep
But the mechanics are complex, so the normal pace
of the ticks and the tocks is like drum and bass
hammering the timing at two forty beats
Minute after minute I as try to count sheep
but my brain is aware of every tick and every tock
as they pound in my head like a cliff fall of rock
I try to quieten it with the weight of my pillow
but the noise reduction is a big fat zero
and the only reward that I seem to reap
is that it puts my fucking arm soundly to sleep
so I pull out my arm and wave it around
and signal the start of the tick tocking sound
But my mind is active with thoughts rushing about
each jostling for position and eager to shout
but the thoughts are all cryptic and I don't understand
just what it is that my brain demands
I just close my eyes and try my best
but my body is tired, my brain needs to rest
My memory should be making neural connections
in which to develop long term recollections
but instead it is spiralling out of control
and managing to destroy all of my soul
All I want to do is to get off to sleep
as the hour hand on my watch is starting to creep
slowly round to the break of dawn
I raise my hand to stifle a yawn
to find that the noise hasn’t yet stopped
the infernal tick and fucking tock