Dreams In the Bunk

Dreams in the Bunk By Sy Roth An aching tired eats away, Slurping at his soul Yearning wakefulness from the darkness. He heaved. Sigh in a soft world of crimson-waving flowers Dancing away to his numbers etched on him, his scales. The others turn, he with them Intemperate mob Waring in fisticuff frenzy with the bedbugs. Their odor wafts in on the breeze From the chinks in the poorly built walls, A pig-sty pen for the downtrodden. And their snoring, a milk-curdling vengeance That threadbare cloth could not mask--- A chorus of caterwauling madness. With it the dawn, still somewhat dark outside, When permeable reality, aloft on a black steed, Clip clops them off their boards, swaying under their weight They disassemble themselves from the nightmare Like nano-robots clicking off their nerves and senses To march another day To the tune, an assembled cacophony of scratching And hats sweeping from their brows as the others jackboot About them in their own jocular way. Drink and ego made them bold, And they could pretend to die through their night, Their own snores a tuneful melody. While the others dream of respite on their feet Their muscles scream of the daytime terror And the beasts feed on their determination to live.