No rest for the wicked

wordsout by godfrey rust
Welcome To The Real World < 30 of 59 >

No rest for the wicked

If we didn’t need sleep just think of all
each one of us could do—
with eight hours more in twenty-four
how much we could get through.
Time for working, time for talk
and lots more time for play,
and all those little jobs you said
you’d get round to one day.

Pillows may be comforting
and duvets can be tasteful—
beds have their uses, certainly,
but sleeping is so wasteful.
If you want to get your MBA
or gain one more diploma
you can’t expect to make the grade
whilst lying in a coma.

You could be making megabucks,
instead your broker dozes,
but there’d be no closing market price
if nothing ever closes.
You could catch up in the rat race —
though there’d still be more ahead:
have you ever wondered why you never
see a rat in bed?

The best of pharmaceutical
researchers are all hopin’
to find the magic formula
to keep those eyelids open
before the boys in DNA
start getting way too clever
and isolate the sleeping gene
and wake us up for ever.

Are you missing opportunities
while you’re lying there unconscious?
Was Stalin good at breaking eggs?
Was Pilate’s first name Pontius?
We’d boost our productivity
by staggering proportions—
a third more murders, burglaries,
divorces and abortions.

Unending time to monitor
our share portfolios—
it sounds a dream (although of course
there’d be no more of those),
but still there is another way
to do it much more neatly:
let’s just cut out the middle man—
abolish time completely.

Why break our lives up just to fit
the sun and moon’s behaviour?
The timeless web of cyberspace
will be our constant saviour.
Weeks are for weaklings, days for the dazed
and minutes there for taking—
No more seconds, only firsts
will mark the claims we’re staking.

An end at last to jet-lag—
put that body clock away.
Tomorrow really never comes,
it’s all one long today.
No time, no place, no start, no end—
O wouldn’t we be clever—
if we didn’t need sleep at last we would
live virtually for ever.

Revised in 2000 and 2019.