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Back to Sleep

In very early years, now far behind,
When I returned to earth at midnight deep
From nightmare scares within my frightened mind,
My mother rocked and sang me back to sleep.

I hid in bed from monster and from man
As blackened shadows seemed to slowly creep,
But once I finally to her bedroom ran,
My mother rocked and sang me back to sleep.

No sounds outside from people, beasts, or cars,
Her voice and arms would soothe me as I’d weep;
I saw her by the light of moon and stars—
My mother rocked and sang me back to sleep.

The happiest of moments in this was
When I collapsed into a sleeping heap,
Contented, safely dreaming, all because
My mother rocked and sang me back to sleep.

.

.

Shipwrecked on a Dream Island

inspired by Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening

I learned the magic island was a dream;
Returning home required that I wake
The far-off dreamer by a quest extreme
And end the island in an instant quake.
I searched for weapons, magic things, and keys
To castles underground where monsters stayed.
I battled giants, djinn, and ghosts for these
To end the detailed dream the sleeper made.

I didn’t think I’d love a local girl,
And yet, I did.  She sang with siren’s voice.
My quest complete, her hug and kiss would hurl
Me into such an agonizing choice!
She looked and felt and smelt and sounded real
As women in the waking world I know,
But when the sleeper woke, the dream would steal
To where a snuffed-out candle’s flame would go.

That girl, just like the island, was no more
Than dancing light upon a sleeping eye.
No mind behind the face I’d fallen for,
And yet it pained me so to say goodbye!
I soon awakened on my floating boat,
A plank from ships the storm had torn apart.
The memory of the girl now seems remote,
But still her siren song is in my heart.

.

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Lost Sheep, Lost Sleep

an extended villanelle

The devil takes the people as his sheep.
Surrounded every day by hellish flocks,
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

They sell off precious human life for cheap
And weigh your death against the price of stocks—
The devil takes the people as his sheep.

Another mother kills her child; I weep.
Murders tick by like second hands on clocks—
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

A couple learns the penalties are steep
For right belief as “child welfare” knocks—
The devil takes the people as his sheep.

A woman casts her husband from his keep;
His speaking with his kids, she quickly blocks—
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

Through Christian doors, satanic toxins seep;
Despite God’s love, each family member mocks—
The devil takes the people as his sheep.

Behind their Jesus masks the demons creep.
Which facts are lies?  Which facts are orthodox?
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

To God’s small flock, our Shepherd seems asleep
As one more pro-life priest, the Pope defrocks—
The devil takes the people as his sheep.

God says that “as you sow, so shall you reap”
While keeping evil free from bars and locks—
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

Perhaps I think too much and think too deep
Because I think outside my culture’s box.
The devil takes the people as his sheep;
I lie in bed with dread and cannot sleep.

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“Pro-life priest:” referring to Fr. Frank Pavone, defrocked by Pope Francis for pro-life activism

“As you sow, etc.:” Galatians 6:8

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Joshua C. Frank works in the field of statistics and lives near Austin, Texas. His poetry has also been published in Snakeskin, Sparks of Calliope, Atop the Cliffs, and the Asahi Haikuist Network, and his short fiction has been published in Nanoism.

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18 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    “Back to Sleep” is a comforting poem and one that takes me back to my childhood when my mother would sing me to sleep, yet I only had one nightmare in my life and it was back then.

    “Shipwrecked on a Dream Island” is one of those beautifully crafted and dreamy poems much like those I have imagined, girl included. I loved the words and phrases in this one in particular.

    “Lost Sheep, Lost Sleep” is a great religious piece that places our present culture in perilous perspective. It is one of those poems I wish all the destroyers of life had to read and that would affect their behavior to become defenders of the sanctity of life! It remains for those of us who oppose evil to spread the gospel and do what we can to alleviate and neutralize the threat.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Roy. You sure are blessed if you’ve only had one nightmare your whole life!

      As for spreading the gospel, our culture is so depraved that such efforts are doomed to failure. I studied the world’s top apologists and evangelists, spent years at it, and still had no success spreading the gospel. Western culture doesn’t want to be saved anymore. Hence my poem “Ballad of the Video Game Hero.”

      Part of the problem is that people can’t be taught to be Christian if they don’t know how to be human first—to be men, women, and children, to interact, to love, etc. My poetry aims to build up the human side as a foundation for unbelievers to accept the gospel and for believers to live it.

      Reply
  2. Brian A Yapko

    All three are wonderful poems, Josh.

    ”Back to Sleep” is a moving remembrance of the close ties between a mother and child, with a particular focus on her role in banishing terrors both imaginary and real — something of a guardian angel. The villanelle is particularly apt for this theme as it reinforces the cyclic and continuous ways in which a mother’s protection gives comfort night after night.

    I’m not at all familiar with Nintendo’s “Legend of Zelda” but I very much enjoy the interplay between the dream world and reality and what we give up by reentering the real world. It’s really quite remarkable how dreams can stick with us and even add a slightly mystical quality to reality. I think you capture that evanescence here.

    My favorite of the three is “Lost Sheep” which has a strong moral foundation and which taps into a neurosis which I suspect most thinking people now share. Insomnia, rumination, dread – all unambiguously earned by the wretchedness of current social devolution. Sanity is not always a blessing. How can anyone enjoy “pleasant dreams” after this litany of injustice by a devil who is real, active and who revels in good people’s discomfort?

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Brian.

      “Back to Sleep” is not a villanelle, but a kyrielle. A villanelle has two refrains, repeated at the ends of alternate stanzas; a kyrielle has a refrain, repeated at the end of each stanza, and often (though not always) one line per stanza that rhymes with it. (I’ll cry if I respond to the rest of your description!)

      The original Legend of Zelda game came out in 1986; it was a medieval fantasy role-playing game with the graphics one would expect from a game made at the time. Link’s Awakening, later in the series, was developed for the Game Boy, a hand-held game system with even less sophisticated graphics (monochrome and far fewer pixels), and released in 1993. The game became such a classic that it was remade with modern graphics in 2019. I think it was the constraints imposed by the graphics that led the game to become such a classic, just as writing poems in form makes them much better—constraints force creativity. (Anyone who’s interested in knowing about the source material can simply type the title of the game into any search engine.)

      The romantic subplot is a small part of the game, and the player blithely goes through the game in an effort to win… but when I played the game in childhood, I never thought what the experience of finally reaching his goal and leaving the island would be like for the game’s hero if it were a true story. It would be like the player’s dread of his beloved game ending (or the way I’ve felt coming to the end of a novel), but greatly magnified.

      Your points about “Lost Sheep, Lost Sleep” are all spot on. I’ve had to stop looking at any news. My poems “A Villanelle for Robert Hoogland” and “A Woman’s Right” came from nights when I had just heard about the events that inspired them and couldn’t sleep until I wrote them.

      Reply
  3. Joseph S. Salemi

    “Back to Sleep” is rooted in a perennial truth: young children need the physical presence of their parents at those times when they are terrified or upset. In the animal kingdom, this is usually because of actual dangers and threats. But with human beings, it is also because of imagined, fantasized, and mentally conjured-up terrors that can “harrow the soul,” as Shakespeare puts it. They are just as upsetting to a small child. And the poet here describes the sense of absolute security that comes with being held in the arms of a parent.

    The second poem is also about the profound power of human imagination. Unlike the lower animals, we can create mental scenarios and stories, for our entertainment or just for sheer titillation. And we can manipulate their details to suit our fancies. That is the bedrock of fictive mimesis.

    The third poem is a lament about how very bad things are right now, at least in the sight of those of us who aren’t blinded by the massive propaganda that is blared at us 24/7.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you for your analysis, Joe. I’m glad you enjoyed them enough to comment.

      Reply
  4. Margaret Coats

    Two charmers and a terror, Joshua. All very good. Love the line, “I think outside my culture’s box.” You certainly do, but you also bring in contemporary game culture that is little known to some of us. Give me traditional mahjongg with no advertisements or peripheral material while I exercise my memory for a win that is quick but not timed.

    Excuse me if I have said so before, but you have some poet companions in the extended villanelle field. The particularly good ones are “In every sound I think I hear her feet” [8 stanzas] by May Probyn, and “I did not dream that Love would stay” [10 stanzas like yours here] by Rosamund Marriott Watson. I have seen examples of 7 or 9 stanzas, but not worth mentioning, and there is Oscar Wilde’s rather simplistic “Pan,” a double villanelle of 12 stanzas.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Margaret. I’m glad you like them.

      The source material for “Shipwrecked on a Dream Island” is actually from my childhood. In the gaming world, a game from 30 years ago (which it is) is not considered contemporary, even though for those of us with a more traditional mindset, any electronic game is contemporary by definition, just as those of us who appreciate classical music label all music written after 1900 contemporary. See my reply to Brian for more about the source material.

      I haven’t heard of the extended villanelles you mention; I’ll have to take a look. Thank you for listing them here.

      Reply
  5. Cynthia Erlandson

    I, also, especially liked the extended villanelle; I admire the long list of rhymes it required you to come up with (orthodox, and defrocks were particularly clever.)

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Cynthia. I had originally written it as a standard villanelle, but I felt it still had more to say. The form forced me to get really creative with the rhyming in order to get all the other points in. Those words you mention weren’t in the original standard villanelle version . As I mentioned to Brian, constraints force creativity, as I believe they did in the source material for “Shipwrecked on a Dream Island.”

      Reply
  6. Shaun C. Duncan

    There’s a nice variation of theme between all three poems but I particularly like how the first and last contrast – the nightmare creatures imagined by the child versus the perhaps more mundane but all-too-real and insomnia-inducing horrors which afflict the soul of the adult. And taking inspiration from a Nintendo game is quite wonderful.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Shaun. I liked the contrast, too. Sometimes one poem I write will inspire another, and sometimes a theme keeps repeating in my work. I would prefer the monsters of my childhood nightmares, along with “giants, djinn, and ghosts,” over the real monsters in human form that have taken over the world in ways their predecessors could only have dreamed of doing.

      The Nintendo game, which was one of my childhood favorites, actually says of the girl’s “siren song” (my phrase, not theirs): “This song will always remain in your heart!” Whoever wrote that line was right (hence the last line of the poem), not just about the song, but about the story. That’s why I had to write it.

      Reply
  7. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Josh, what a trio of poetic treats! Every impacting poem stands alone, yet as a series they say so much more.

    I love the way ‘Back to Sleep’ lauds and applauds the significant role of a mother in a world that now has little respect for women and for parenthood. A mother’s soothing hug is a gift for any fearful child and your beautiful poem says just that.

    For me, ‘Shipwrecked on a Dream Island’ speaks of the increasingly fake world we live in… no amount of special effects will ever take the place of a real woman in an age that cannot find the words to describe one. This poem serves as a grave warning to all those who waste their lives buying lies. The truth matters.

    I like the contrast between your first and last poem… the last poem being the real nightmare. When “Through Christian doors, satanic toxins seep” evil thrives. Your choice of an extended villanelle is spot on – the message carried throughout in your repeating lines is one all should hear. Humankind is losing its soul, and you say just that with passion and poetic aplomb. Josh – thank you!

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Susan! I’m really happy to see how much you enjoy them. As always, you’ve described the deeper point behind the writing of each one of them.

      “Back to Sleep,” as everyone has probably guessed, is a true story, and the speaker is me. Same with “Lost Sheep, Lost Sleep,” sadly.

      Not long after I wrote “Shipwrecked on a Dream Island,” I saw an article about fantasy ruining real-life relationships and yet being encouraged in modern culture: https://truelovedates.com/in-love-with-a-dream-fantasy-vs-reality/ Also one about men opting for AI “girlfriends” or even “wives” instead of actual marriage: https://futurism.com/experts-ai-girlfriend-apps-men (this is probably going to be the next sexual “rights” movement, and we’ll be forced to call a man’s AI his wife). I realized long ago that indulging in fantasy of any kind impedes our real-life progress on many levels (no pun intended, but I like it).

      The source material for that poem, a video game from my childhood, is fascinating from an adult perspective in that it considers the ephemeral, unreal nature of dreams and fantasy, which the game itself is by nature.

      Reply
  8. Mia

    Joshua, Thank you for these poems. They are extremely well composed, readable and thought provoking.
    I particularly liked your poem To His Coy Mistress that was posted a while back as well. It inspired me to write one of my own. I was going to post it on your page but didn’t but wished I had.

    Reply
  9. Satyananda Sarangi

    What a real gem I had missed out on! “Back to Sleep” shall remain one of my favourite poems for a long time now.

    Reply
    • Joshua C. Frank

      Thank you, Satyananda. I just saw this comment now. I’m honored.

      Reply

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