IT'S YOUR MUG ANNIVERSARY ISSUE Brandon D. Johnson   THIS IS NOT INSOMNIA it comes naturally this failure this refusal to close my eyes I will not succumb to fatigue in fear that one night just one my people will come for me will call my name I being the only one to save them take them past dreams into a new time/tune/tone from the bell a peal only I can produce a fear that my name will carom city caverns a long empty street for me to come running come with a hammer come with a spear come with pen and paper and I will be asleep.   STARRY CLOTH at night, when bulb burned moths fall exhausted, mosquitoes tire of blood and crickets no longer gauge temperature when distant lightning speaks turmoil, but clouds won't drop enough rain to cool earth I think of you, alone in our bed, a widow of my insomnia, of my wanderings with muses and the machinations of dark morning you unable to fill each square of the mattress except with lament and I cringe at my inability to succumb to sandmen and songs long sung by sleep's sirens. one would think that I'd learned, after years of nights fearing I might miss something, that nothing is going to happen that it is alright to give my eyes, my body, rest. the Night should not be so strong a mistress. her legs have not your luscious curve, her insistent voice has not the mellifluous candor of even your complaints. and if Night is succubus, is courtesan, her starry cloth falling to ground, begging for a wish upon her body, I want to know why. but my demon mistress does not frolic in unmindful brain so, I must sit by the window, let tobacco smoke pass for hookah hash, and candy for lotus blossoms hoping that maybe my own wonderlands will appear, my head resting upon my hands, praying that this....this is the night words creep into my spine, bounce upon my brow, or settle in my soul, and free me from the job of holding the world's pauses in my hands so that I might spend my lifetimes giving you the comfort that Night does not need Brandon D. Johnson is author of Love’s Skin, Man Burns Ant, The Strangers Between, and co-author of The Black Rooster Social Inn: This Is The Place. He is published in Callaloo, Gargoyle, redbrick review and Potomac Review, as well as the anthologies Cabin Fever: Poets at Joaquin Miller’s Cabin, Drumvoices 2000, and Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem’s 1st Decade. He is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow. Born in Gary, Indiana, he received his B.A from Wabash College and his J.D from Antioch School of Law. He works with a information marketing organization in DC, where he lives with his family.   Published in Volume 10:2, Spring 2009.   Read more by this author: Brandon D. Johnson