WordsOut poems by Godfrey Rust  | collection Welcome To The Real World ← 30 of 59 → | home  

No rest for the wicked

If we didn’t need sleep just think of all
     each one of us could do—
with eight hours more in twenty-four
     how much we could get through.
Time for working, time for talk
     and lots more time for play,
and all those little jobs you said
    you’d get round to one day. 

Pillows may be comforting
    and duvets can be tasteful—
beds have their uses, certainly,
    but sleeping is so wasteful.
If you want to get your MBA
    or gain one more diploma
you can’t expect to make the grade
    while lying in a coma. 

You could be making megabucks,
     instead your broker dozes—
but there’d be no closing market price
     if nothing ever closes.
You could catch up in the rat race
   (though there’d still be more ahead—
I wonder if that’s why you never
     see a rat in bed?). 

The best of pharmaceutical
     researchers are all hopin’
to find the magic formula
     to keep those eyelids open
before the boys in DNA
     start getting way too clever
and isolate the sleeping gene
     and wake us up for ever. 

Are you missing opportunities
   while you’re lying there unconscious?
Was Stalin good at breaking eggs?
    Was Pilate’s first name Pontius?
We’d boost our productivity
    by staggering proportions—
a third more murders, burglaries
    divorces and abortions. 

Unending time to monitor
    our share portfolios
it sounds a dream (although of course
    there’d be no more of those).
But still there’s yet another way
    to do it much more neatly:
Let’s just cut out the middle man—
    abolish time completely!

Why break our lives up just to fit
    the sun and moon’s behaviour?
The timeless web of cyberspace
    can be our virtual saviour.
Weeks are for weaklings, days for the dazed
    and minutes there for taking—
No more seconds, only firsts
    will mark the claims we’re staking. 

An end at last to jet-lag—
     put that body clock away.
Tomorrow really never comes,
     it’s just one long today
No time, no place, no start, no end—
     O wouldn’t we be clever
if we didn’t need sleep—just think,  we could
     live virtually for ever...