Awakening

Another prison poem written at Highpoint South in the summer of 2016 and dedicated to a person that I will not name until I have his permission. He suggested that he liked my more esoteric, pretentious and pompous work – so that’s what he got. A great guy who tried to get some of my poems published and who had an amazing set of life experiences and talents, including writing. An example of a person totally misplaced in the prison system and of no threat to anyone.

Awakening
 
Is it I or the universe that awakes?
Sunrise surrounds me; my eyes reveal it
To whom belongs that which the photon makes?
Is this vision mine; is it lent or do I steal it?
My mind made up, as if a borrowed bed
It need not be by fact convinced
Silk sheets can be straightened in my head
And, by these thoughts, all doubt evinced
 
This truth may be correct though its believer wrong
Awakening a rebirth, post-body-rested
Confirmed by brilliant blackbird song
Reality revealed and rationally tested
But to whom belong those waves of sound?
As they are mine, these words I write
So that noise is theirs, those on the ground
Who, scavenging scraps, have ceased their flight
 
Is awakening a unique idea
That which is witnessed by some seventh sense?
Most mortal meaning is unclear
If clarity there be, it’s in human pretence
To whom belongs the food I have consumed?
The earth has given it, or rather lent
Its remnants will be soon subsumed
By water and waste, and by energy spent
 
Is life also lent, like a persona assumed?
Well; awakening  resembles a resurrection
Sleep, like death, a span of time consumed
A new period begins, a mathematical correction
Call it morning or whatever we choose to name it
Elsewhere this moment is black as night
A universal force – humanity can never tame it
Each awakening – a life for which we fight
 
Is that fight, then, of both body and mind?
By my writing, this poetry will participate
Through an act of the least unusual kind
But some soul must to my hands dictate
It cannot separate body from brain
Sleep may provoke an involuntary dream
But no thought can independence gain
Awakening is, of consciousness, a simplistic stream
 
 
 
Dedicated to x, with whom I shared both building and yard one summer, and who encouraged and nourished my quasi-philosophical futilities. All complaints about the contents should be addressed to him, care of the Spectator.