Are we sentinels?

Are we sentinels?

The sleepless ones

Does it matter how we approach

The thanklessness of waiting

Standing up or sitting down

Pacing seems to bring its own sadness

Wearing the carpet as well as our patience thin

Does anybody care

Is it true that all great thinkers

Struggled with the notion

Perhaps it was always used as a distraction

From the truth

Of wakeful nights as a fruitless endeavour.

When to let go

Can be a difficult enough question

To answer at the best of times

Without imbuing it with mythical import

Do thine own enemies sleep easy in their beds

Who might they be

But past acquaintance who may never now

Think twice of you

Perhaps it is in close family

Where the greatest hatreds lie

Smouldering in the dark

Waiting for the fuel of oxygen

To burst it into flame

As white phosphorous

Once lit

Never to be doused

Until all energy has been dissipated.

And yet

We forever excuse their trespass

No matter how deeply runs

The river of discontent

The churn of vicious rumour

As the ghost of familiarity

Haunts the shadows of our history

Every second guess

Fails to bring an answer any closer

But somehow there is nobility

In the nightly fight

For moral supremacy

A never-ending search for

The purest meaning of integrity

When in the coming of the morning nothing good

Of it remains

But a dull ache of psychological

Repression

A dysthymic depression

As every single thought

Which was deemed to be essential

Is re-interred

Hidden from daylight

Stuffed into a sepulchre

Pushed into a recess

At the furthest end of the shelf

In the very last row

At the back, behind the stack

Of old grievances

That only seems to come

Somewhere within our reach

One hour after midnight

After a toilet break

And a cup of tea.