I was going to lie in this morning

To rest from a gruelling week

I was going to let the sun rise

While I remained asleep,

Dreaming of a tranquil place

With clear blue cloudless skies

Waves gently lapping at my feet

Palm trees to shade my eyes,

In the distance there’d be seagulls

Just drifting on the breeze

White sails on the horizon

Sailing on an Azure sea,

Dusky native maidens

Would tend my every need

While my ears were serenaded

By Angelic symphonies,

Yes that was my intention

The plan I’d had for weeks

To let the turmoil of the world

Go by while I’m asleep,

And what a plan it would have been

Had the hand of fate not knocked

To wake me at my usual time

By my infernal body clock,

All other clocks were silenced

Their batteries removed

No chance was there they’d wake me

From my gentle dreamtime muse,

Yet the best laid plans of mice and men,

Are oft times cruelly mocked

For there are no batteries to remove

In an overactive body clock,

They lie there almost dormant

Or at very least inert

Letting me sleep peacefully

Each time I’m late for work,

So I miss my bus or miss my train

And appointments by the score

But the day that I can stay in bed

It goes off at half past four,

That’s four thirty in the morning

Still the middle of the night

Before the birds have sung their song

And well before daylight,

My body clock is ringing

Loud enough to wake the dead

Of course no one else can hear it

Because it’s ringing in my head,

And I’m thinking as I lay there

Suffering post traumatic shock

I wish there was a snooze control

To my internal body clock,

By S. E. Ralph