The clock ticks so slowly, my mind spins so fast

Imaginings hover just out of reach, how long can a minute last?

01.32: A dialogue in my mind as I try, fruitlessly, to unwind. Imagine if I could send you a screen-shot. A screen-shot of my mind. I'd save all these words. No. It'd be absurd.  You'd need a screen-shot of time.

01.48: I'm going to oversleep, I'm going to be late.Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Suddenly, my mind, like a kingfisher, dips beneath the surface, and from the unremembered unconscious

Grabs hold of moments, vignettes from the past, then resurfaces, shaking water from the catch

Squirming with embarrassment, I quickly amend the script, so it is I who departs with the witty riposte, the clever, closing quip

I tease myself with what I should have said, my unconscious is unconvinced, more anxiety, quivering dread

01.57 Apropos of nothing, my mind suddenly zips from the past into possible futures, developing bizarre scenarios on the way

In Tokyo in a bar, a clumsy befuddled giant surrounded by hordes of bespectacled Lilliputians is trouserless

Off the Dublin ferry, staggering around a mythic Liverpool, covered in sick and asking directions, being answered in a richly incomprehensible double-dutch

And such and such. My mind whirls and wriggles but never comes to rest

'Ring in with the lurgy. Tell them it's the dreaded version. Highly contagious. Self-certificated? Certainly.'

02.03 Imagining how tired I will be, I finally submit, turn on the light: read.

....................................................................

04.44: If I read any more of this malarky I'll go mad. I'll have a cup of tea and listen to the wireless. Sad sleepless bastard.