Sometimes I wake up in the night.
I squint at the green-eyed clock
and it tells me two fourteen. Outside
rain sidles down. Why does my head
ring with shouting? Words, loud words
have been thrown tumbling like empty
boxes down the steps of my spine.
Who argues in my head at night
after I have crawled into the wet
cave of my own belly to sleep?
My cats snooze in a multicolored heap,
one snoring, one whimpering. My
love is chewing the cud of his day
grinding his teeth and mumbling.
But my brain bears the scuff marks of boots.
Somebody has been pacing there ranting --
the dogmatist I was at thirty-two?
Noisy ghosts have been making speeches.
Are these sins of omission screeching?
Unworn alternate selves in chartreuse?
Scorned opinions demanding equal air time?
I am like the beds in rooming houses
of Word War II Detroit in the housing crisis
of my childhood, slept on in turns,
one guy getting into bed from the graveyard
shift when another crawled out to shower,
my head is in continuous use, rented out
to ghosts whenever I shut off the lights.
Marge Piercy
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