My Arm Will Fall Off

Inspired by several mornings of waking up with my right arm asleep to the shoulder.

My Arm Will Fall Off


I won't go to bed,
for my arm will fall off.
It's happened three nights in a row...
I go to bed fine and
then wake partly numb.
Five-thirty comes and
I can't feel my thumb, elbow, bicep --
not even my shoulder!
My forearm's a log,
my tricep a boulder...

A terrible thing,
to find someone's arm
beneath your body
before the dawn.
"How rude!," I think,
"How dare you, dude!"
It's uncomfortably hard
and quite hard to forget.
I move to the right
and then to the left,
yet this stranger's arm --
it follows each move!
It causes alarm
and so I say,
"Oblivious owner,
come get your arm!
It's in my way!"

I won't go to bed,
for harm, I fear,
will come to this freckly,
forgotten limb.
I'll wake at five-thirty
with a purple-blue lump.
I'll swing it around
and then, with a thump,
squishy and foreign,
thick and dead,
the thing'll fall off.
It's this I dread,
for on my keyboard
I'd make no sense.
My tap, tap, tap,
from this point hence,
would read ta , ta , ta ,
becase d be stc te eft sde f te ebard!