Awake (4) The Stalker's Dilemma

It's been six months and Taylor hasn't slept for a minute of it.

His girlfriend (Kate) is unaware of his extreme insomnia and leaves him overnight while she is away on a business trip. In her absence Taylor's sleep deprivation turns to psychosis.

Now alone he imagines his household appliances tormenting him.

Until he decides to act.

Awake is a film I discovered three years ago, and it was so disturbing that it inspired me to write this five-act poem:

Scene 1

The loud and smoky bar

Is often logical,

And geometric light

A perfect camouflage –

For no one notices

How night is pivoting.

The jostling of the crowd

And pounding in the air

Are all that matter now. 

That powers fall in step –

How anonymity

Is opportunity.

Desire like fire is here,

Its object crystal clear.

Scene 2

There is dilemma

To this agenda –

For when unspoken

Statutes are broken,

Then there is reason

In any season

To kill the breaker.

Long live, the maker!

It can be heaven

In states uneven –

That powers may angle

For those who mangle,

In whose possessing

Desires undressing.

Scene 3

Compress the world

In measures that

The human hour

May understand. 

The narrowing

Of night will come

As seconds slip.

The metronome

Foretells an end –

So let desire

Be satisfied,

Let voices drown

‘Til powers be

All that there is.

Awake, Act 4. The Stalker's Dilemma © Ron Villejo