Insomnia #1

If insomnia were a woman, she would groove Sagittarius.
If insomnia were straight she would blister caminos like the harkies.
If insomnia were a stairway it would lead sideways to Jesus.
But insomnia is a kleptomaniac who has stolen the nighttime.

***

Insomnia #2

And why wouldn’t the night taste like velcro?
And why let the forest salve your pain?
Muskey reverberating tendrils wreak of dayglo Gloria’s bosco colored hair.
And nuance, her sole victim, dies in vain.

***

Insomnia #3

Dogs sound so purposeful barking at 3am.
Like that amber alert information chain in Hundred and One Dalmatians.
Everything blares with meaning in the middle of a fitful night:
.     The reverb of a faceless iron boot clank on a rusty stair.
.               The north of the Kern River twang of the ring in my ears.
.     The slow hollow sleeping cadence of my companion’s restful breathing.
.               The occassional sudden revery of a screeching bat,
.               or maybe that’s my sallow peaked abused neighbor’s ghost.
.     The bus engine converted to drive water through an irrigation ditch
.      in a quadratic plot, like a wandering Cessna wailing away.
Every sound sits engineered to keep me wound up and awake.

***

A historian by trade, B. Jordan Schmoll originates from the boiling foothills of Bakersfield. Schmoll’s writing has appeared in a variety of gracious publications, ranging from the literary magazine Orpheus to the Journal of Appalachian Studies and the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies. He currently teaches history on California’s Central Coast and enjoys his home on the range in Santa Margarita, CA.