What Your Brain Growls While You’re Out

The reflective wakes up with
Some other part of the brain
Whispering, death is coming,

Death is coming, the world is
Ending soon. The motel room
Around awareness murmurs

But keeps symbolically mute.
It is not much past midnight.
Everyone has been asleep.

No one yet should be awake.
But the reflective reflects,
This has happened traveling,

This or something much like this
A number of times before.
It’s almost like eavesdropping—

Awareness wakes up too soon
And catches the brain warning
Itself the world is ending

Soon. So far, hasn’t proved true,
But what, to the brain, is soon?
Does this brain know anything

Or is it simply pacing
Thoughts like lions in their cage,
Toothless, restless in their rage?

Death is coming soon. The world
Is ending soon. But the dawn
Will take forever to break.