Once I Was Awake by Chad Lahr (Prompt Poem)

I.

If October is the aftermath, desolation, and wake

Then May is the swatches that make up the dawn

Wake up the sun, exit the grey anew,

Awaken again something inside that lay dormant

Aching to burst through the frozen ground

Earlier today I saw the freedom of a road bend,

A biker like I, riding the fog line through

The Oregon trees of maple and pine.

Fast, but not fast enough to escape the asphalt behind

Split second of wheels turning

The ground ahead to distant thoughts behind

Scanning the scene before him with hardly enough time

But to react on instinct, keeping him upright

Free

From the pavement that tears, rips, and burns

Yet he rides on

And this too, a grave breaking through

The frozen dirt into May sun beaming down like aching sorrow

Beckoning me upwards as if a magnetic fields has come

To draw us from our deathbeds of complacency

To find the speed of the wind,

The first breath of those opened eyes.

A moment of pure consciousness where my body is no longer

A body at all, but a vehicle of my choosing

Once in a dream, I fell.

The purple seas crashed below

As I fell from a lighthouse,

In the night.

The cold blackness of turbulent evil below

Consumes every limb.

Struggling, grasping, screaming,

I was silent.

Then I took a breath.

II.

I never thought life could be repeated

By myself or anyone else.

But, through new eyes fresh with wonder;

Every new day.

Giggles and smiles radiate from a fresh being

Experiencing for the first time

Before the anchors of life are thrown overboard.

I remember it.

Believe me, what happened next.

I cowered before the child within, who was angry.

“Why did you grow into a big dummy?” She asked.

Though, I did not reply.

Her eyes once full of wonder,

Bore in.

The worst thing you ever said to me was,

“The fire in your eyes has gone out.”

These days, I feel like I am

Hanging from ropes, ready to fall.

My outstretched arm holding on to what I once held dear

While still clinging to my lifeline, my structure,

My sanity.

Listen, we are here to be.

To better ourselves through bettering others.

Be your brain experiencing itself,

For this is all we have.

Once in October, I was awake,

A skeleton of what I once was, staring off

Into the space outside, and the space left inside

Making sense of it all.

But, it’s not October, it’s May

And the fire has been reborn.

The anchors lift and the turbulent seas die within.

The magnetic sun pulls me East

To a new consciousness