Exhaustion

My steps are faltering,
My speech is slurred,
My head is ten times heavier than before:
I am tired.

More than this: I am exhausted,
An Atlas bowed with human pain,
A vampire sated on bitter blood,
Full to bursting with misery
And tired by it.

I sleep, and sleep, and sleep again,
But I can find no rest
And this aching tiredness
Never leaves me.

Not a clean sleep of honest exhaustion,
But nightmare-ravaged unconsciousness
I long for true sleep's oblivion
But it eludes me.
And this tiredness is life-sapping.