Though sleepless, I am risk-averse.
I toss and turn. It could be worse.
I could be stumbling, more than pissed,
a narcotized somnambulist,
wearing pyjamas in the street,
splashing through puddles with bare feet.
I could be gorging mindlessly
or driving blindly towards a tree.
I’ll take insomnia instead:
still wide awake, but safe in bed.

A few questions for British readers of this: Is Ambien sold under that name in the UK? Are these side effects widely known there?

Because I was informed that in the UK the drug is sold under the name Stilnoct, I changed it and made some minor changes to punctuation and wording. But then I learned that brand names of sleep drugs are less known in the UK, so I have gone more generic.

I listen to the faucet drip,
the ice-cube maker grind,
and suddenly the perfect quip
comes popping in my mind

I could have used at lunch today
had I been arch and clever ...
instead of what I chose to say,
which was, "OK, whatever."

Insomnia makes all things right.
By day, I'm slow, unsure.
But sleepless in my bed at night,
I'm quite the raconteur.

Hi Susan,

I haven't found any mention of either Ambien or Stilnoct in my book, imaginatively called 'Medicines' (though it's not exactly bang up to date) and I've certainly not heard of anything remotely like those names. What symptoms are they prescribed for? Maybe I can find something else that's more well-known for you to use, if you give me some details.

Jayne, Ambien is used by millions in the US to treat insomnia. It was mentioned a lot in the news recently as the cause of Tiger Woods' notorious car crash and has been associated with sleepwalking, sleep driving, and sleep eating. In an online search I learned that hundreds of thousands in the UK use it for insomnia, though it is called Stilnoct there (and Stilnox in Australia, where it has been associated with deaths from falls from a balcony and a bridge).

On further thought, I have decided to eliminate the brand name entirely and have edited the poem to reflect that. Thanks, Jayne.

Susan

Susan,

Thanks for all that info. Since I 'sleep the sleep of the pure in heart' I know zilch about such things as sleeping pills, fortunately. Working hard and mooching about on the sphere (often way past my bedtime) usually ensures a good night's 'kip' for me!

I agree with your decision; your poem's better without the brand names, anyway. One small nit: L8
or driving calmly toward a tree - 'or driving calmly at a tree' would fit better.

Jayne, I took your advice for L8. Am I right that "narcotized" is spelled with a "z" there? Here we tend to spell it with an "s."

Susan

Hi Susan,

While '-ize' is more usual as a suffix, '-ise' is given as an alternative in the dictionary, so it doesn't really matter which you use.

I think in the US toward(s) is pronounced tward, which would make the line OK. But then Lucy might not know that. It MAY be pronounced that way in upper class English, like 'forrid' for fore-head, though that may just be an old pronunciation. My stepmother, not upper class, always said accrawse (across) and stuff liike that.

-ize is supposedly the English form, though I use either.

L'esprit d'escalier
 

Hi Susan –

'Toward' is one of many English words that can be pronounced/scanned as two syllables or elided to one. I'm white trash myself, but I generally say 'tward' (and 'forrid', for that matter and I incorrectly tend to pronounce 'decade' as an iam thanks to bloody Auden's use of it as an end-rhyme with 'afraid'). At any rate, you don't have a problem with the scansion and Lucy is sophisticated enough to understand that sheer plonking metronomic regularity is no special virtue. 'Driving at a tree' suggests a degree of intentionality (though you may, ah, intend this in a wry fashion, as in a subconscious wish).

Roger – a neat riff on what the French call 'staircase wit'.


Bazza

White trash, Bazza? And you (like me) a grammar school boy. I say 'forrid' too, mainly because of the limerick with the middle lines

The result was quite horrid
All arse and no forehead

Which is a rhyme one wouldn't lightly give up. What we want to know is, 'What does Liz up Buck House say?' Surely 'toward' instead oif 'towards' is American. And none the worse for that, I may add. YThe lines, Susan, seem to me very neat just as they are.

I don't know that limerick, only the nursery jingle about the little girl who 'had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very very good, and when she was bad she was horrid' (or in the lubricious cynic's rewriting, 'very very popular').

Alf Tennyson has 'All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave' in The Lotos-Eaters

Thanks, Basil and John, for the additional comments on "toward." (I hadn't realized that "towards" is more common there). I did know that the British tend to pronounce the word with two syllables (it's one to me). I had originally decided to keep it for the metrical variation it added to the line, but Jayne's comment made me think I would just look like an ignorant American who couldn't scan. I thought I had changed it to "at" but my edit seems not to have taken. I did not mean to imply a conscious decision to hit the tree, though, so I think I will substitute "blindly" for "calmly."

Susan

Game, set and match to Bazza. Tennyson is about as English as it is possible to get. He liked to lie in a hot bath for hours as all true Englishmen do. In the interests of scholarship I append the limerick. Those of saintly disposition avert your eyes NOW.

There was a young man of Dundee
Who molested an ape in a tree.
The result was quite horrid,
All arse and no forehead,
Three balls and a purple goatee.

One would suppose the thing was a baboon but it won't rhyme.

Funny, & so graphic.

I couldn't sleep until I finished this one. ;)


Da Vinci burned the midnight oil,
as did the Bard, without whose toil
today we'd lack a ‘Mona Lisa',
a ‘Hamlet’ and a ‘Julius Caesar’;
think of the operas, symphonies,
we’d lack if Mozart made more z’s.
Had Descartes not been wont to lie
awake, would he have watched that fly?
How many dawns did Einstein see
while pondering relativity?
...All ye who lie there courting sleep,
if you'll just give up counting sheep
while tossing on those restless seas,
you might create a masterpiece:
a painting or an epic verse,
a treatise on the universe,
an opera or a symphony--
but, failing that, just watch TV.

Marion,
That is delicious!

Good one, Marion. I think it will finish in the money.

If you can tweak a bit before the deadline, maybe avoiding the verse/verse rhyme for example, it would be nice, but I don't think it's essential unless you want to bag the fiver and achieve lasting fame.

Thanks, Birthe, and Bob.

I had a feeling someone would call me on the universe/verse thing. Since winning the fiver has become the be-all end-all of my life, and the only thing that will ever allow me to sleep again, I'll have to give this serious consideration.

May I shamelessly pick any of your minds?:D

Marion, you went two lines over. You can just loose Descarte and you'll be okay.

PS--
Or better yet, just leave out the verse/verse couplet.

I just can't help thinking of that drunken young golfer from Troon who assaulted a harmless baboon in an Ardrossan pub with a funny old club, quite obsolete now, called a spoon.

Well, that was easy. verse/universe is out. I guess Descartes has the science thing covered. Besides, I like the fly.

Thanks!

Edited in:
But now the second part seems too short, don't you think? Aaach. Another sleepless night!

Since you said you wanted to pick our minds, here's what my mind came up with:

Da Vinci burned the midnight oil,
as did the Bard, without whose toil
today we'd lack a ‘Mona Lisa',
a ‘Hamlet’ and a ‘Julius Caesar’.
Had Descartes not been wont to lie
awake, would he have watched that fly?
...All ye who vainly try to sleep,
if you'd just give up counting sheep
while tossing on those restless seas,
you might create a masterpiece:
an opera or philosophy--
but, failing that, just watch TV.

Marion,

think of the operas, symphonies,
we’d lack if Mozart made more z’s.

Just a slight problem here, potentially, in that we pronounce 'z' as 'zed', so symphonies wouldn't rhyme the way it does with zees.

Lucy knows you're American and may not be bothered by this; I'm not particularly bothered - but then I'm not the judge so my opinion counts for zilch! Others may chip in and disagree with me but I just thought I'd point it out; it's your decision.

Hmm, that's interesting Jayne. I never thought of that.

Do you Brits have the expression 'making z's'? But then, if you pronounced it 'making zeds' it wouldn't make sense, would it, because it's the 'zee' sound rather than the letter 'z' that matters here.

Lucy's allowed some of my Yankeeisms--though she does correct my spellings--so she might let this through. (Assuming she'd let it through anyway!)

Bob's shortened version might make this a moot point however.

Hi Marion,

Zee makes much more sense than zed;
I wish that we said zee instead!
I'm knackered, so I'm off to bed.

(10.30pm here and I've had a hard day, with another busy one tomorrow.)
See you anon......ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZ

Well, Jayne, can't agree about zee and zed. I think BE scores over AE here as it's too easy to confuse Z and C when there's only the voiced/unvoiced difference.

Marion, is 'zizz' ('a zizz' or 'to zizz') used in AE? In fact,I tried to sound the z's in yours as 'zizz' at first after reading 'symphonies' as 'symphoniz' before realising the rhyme with 'symphoneez'. Had it in an early version of my stab at the Insomnia piece, but changed. Likewise, is a 'a kip' or 'to kip' known in AE? I have this in the form 'kippers' in the version I posted.

Marion,

Your poem is definitely a winner.

But in these lines

while tossing on those restless seas,
you might create a masterpiece

I don't hear "seas/masterpiece" rhyming. The first ends with "eez" and the second with "ees." It would be like trying to rhyme "spouses" with "houses." They don't.

Martin

I think seas and masterpiece rhyme ENOUGH. In certain parts of Scotland, not polite parts I grant, spouses does indeed rhyme with houses. Bily Connolly would make them rhyme.

Bazza,

When I was young and went to pubs
I played at gowf with seven clubs.
I played on Sunday afternoon.
A cleek, a driver and a spoon,
An iron, a mashie and a putter,
A niblick too, the bread-and-butter
Club for gowfers in a fix.
I once went round in ninety-six.
The price was three-and-six a round.
Now it would cost me twenty pound.

Martin,
You don't know how I struggled to come up with the "seas/masterpiece" rhyme!! I'm going to go with John's assessment and hope Lucy agrees.

Jerome,
Aren't kippers a kind of fish?
Must confess total ignorance on 'kip' or 'to kip'.

Jayne,

How about a song that goes:

"You say zee,
and I say zed..."

Just spell it "masterpeas" and, if anyone asks, say that people with insomnia often become giddy and say things like that.

When I was little, I thought the Christmas carol went, Sleep in heavenly peas, slee-eep in heavenly peas . . . .

Not peas but: my body lies over the lotion, my body lies over the seat.

Just disregard. I could not resist.

Jerome,

You disagreed with me over this:

I have to say that it was just a bit of daftness; don't take me so seriously!

Remember what John Lennon used to say to Julian when they had their family dinners? "All I am saying is give peas a chance."

Zees and Zeds

If you make zees at night your spouse
might send you packing from the house;
but if you lie there making zeds
you could wake up with a broken head.

I heard the British don't say zee.
No, what they say is zed.
I wonder if this means they also
call a bee a bed?
How gruesome it would sound if they
did not say dee, but dead.
The way the British talk sometimes
seems awfully strange to med.