awake/less awake

Siesta is a black dot of yin
in the middle of day’s white yang.

I hear this on the radio,
tires lazing across Silver Lake pavement
post-meeting. The heat wave has lifted
just enough to make us remember night.

The industrial revolution made words
like industrious into compliments,
poured them molten into moulds,
threw sleep and bare branch into the river.

I am dragging the polluted water
in search of what died. It’s muddy
down here and meaty. Something’s always
brewing in the land of baby fat and long

pauses. Of course I don’t find it.
Look at me with my oxygen tank,
thinking, I’ll live here for 12 months
like it’s a junior year in Spain.

In Spain sleep disorders are on the rise.
In the name of an orderly workplace
naps have been nixed, but people are defiant,
still dining at ten, dancing themselves ragged.

A castanet’s click is a white wink of yang.
I aborted a nap to type this.