no poetry before bed, young lady

I need to stop reading poetry right before I go to sleep. Why? Well, when I read poetry right before I sleep I tend to think in metaphor all night. This means that I will wake up 3-6 times in the night trying to remember glimpses of images and the sounds of the perfect words that I never seem to be able to find during my waking hours. This is not conducive to a good night's sleep and usually I can't even remember the lines and ideas that I had dreamed.

This happened to me about a month ago (see Dreaming in verse) and then again Thursday night. I was reading Guy Davenport's translations of Archilochos' fragments before I went to bed and woke up thinking of metaphors for nothingness and imagery to explain the feelings of desperation (neither of which I can remember). This is one of the only set of lines that I managed to write down during the night (I think it was about 4 am). I have no idea where the image came from. I don't even like eggs.

like the cracking of an egg
the sun yolk slithers
down
the smooth slope of the
sky bowl

Really weird. Sometimes I'm amazed at the depths of my mind that I have never even seen or explored. Sometimes ideas crawl their way out of the depths of my mind (you know, the place where it mingles with my soul) and shimmy their way down my tongue where they dangle on the tip waiting for an unguarded moment to come pouring forth eliciting shock from not only those around me but from myself as well. Case in point. See what I mean?!