The Girl Who Slept For Scotland

(album: Modern Blues - 2015)

I tried to sleep upon my back so I could
hold her all night long as in my
arms she slept, alas, but no I couldn't
and when daybreak came and found her
at the far side of the bed I tried to
wake her, tried to stir her, but she wouldn't
In her fug she lay like someone dead
and even when I'd tug her head and
press and nip and agitate and shake her
or call her name or whisper it against her ear,
my breath warm, there were
no words in this universe would wake her

The girl who slept for Scotland

It took me time to comprehend
this state of play extended unto
all her working, waking, shaking hours
for when she finally woke, deep in the day
still she did sleepwalk like a hollow ghost
a-float in haunted towers
and though she heard she didn't see
and though she saw she didn't hear,
attending only to what seemed precise and kind
for she was settled in her dream,
a shopping list of small illusions,
pretty stories that she told her drowsy mind

The girl who slept for Scotland

Yet I remember a day by a river wild
when she clung to me hard like a darling child
And a night in the sheets of a Dublin bed
when she moaned like a woman
and gave sweet head
when we sang in tongues together
and our synchronised guitars
played music to the rafters
made love among the stars
and our bodies beat like light
in love's bold embrace
as her tiny kisses burst like
popping suns around my face

but then drift, recline, collapse,
the lights went out, she fell asleep again
before my kiss-wet face was even dry
I need another haircut she'd say,
talking in her sleep, the sleep-motes
gathered in the dust-bowls of her eye
she teetered down the road apiece,
she and her man, from dozy bedsit land
to junkshop, with her sleeping clothes in sacks
and when I'd gone she teetered down the road again,
yawning as she went,
and went and brought the bloody damn things back

The girl who slept for Scotland