Awake.
To the humming of the world,
surrounding you,
intensifying,
making endless leaps as you sleep.

Progress as simple as leaving your door,
ingenuity is a moral dilemma
and creativity is what you see in your dreams.

It's so easy to lose yourself here
in this expedient
effervescent
materialistic world.
Where goals are meeting next years quota
and improved profit margin.

In the few spare moments it takes
to make a cup of coffee,
you find yourself.

Awake.
To the truth of this world
and your wasted time
among the rat race.

In a single second
the illusion is shattered.
Ignorance is bliss,
living in a trance we take no time to doubt.
To ponder.

To exist.

Where rain is something you run from
when it once made you feel whole.
And you forget the images you cherished
as a child
running between the horse's hooves
and skipping playfully home
never stopping to smell the flowers,
only to pluck them from the earth
as a gift to the most beautiful girl.

How is it that a single second can completely change your life?

How you forget about those days you spent
gazing out at the ocean
until your eyes started to burn
with the reflection of the sun.

Or your silent cold tranquility
feeling the ice and snow cover your body
and take you to a euphoric state.

Yet lately you don't even have time to notice
the way the light hits the sky,
or the perfect alignment
of light and shadow
playing against her sleeping face.

You've forgotten to live,
and for that
you might as well be dead.

For the greatest wisdom
lies in observation.
And time is a hypocrite,
pushing you into motion,
to find stability and progress
and maintain remaining stubbornly unchanged in its passing.

Yet upon notice of these things,
these aspects of life,
you can realize not only what you've lost
but what you can find.

Beyond the beauty of the beast
and your salvage desire.
The feeling of the wheel beneath your hands
as she screamed at you "DRIVE!"
and the flashing lights and sirens as you drove in the darkness,
into oblivion.

Or the feeling of that first brush of hands against your body.

The feeling of living existentially.
Knowing that tomorrow
you'll go somewhere you've never been before,
see something new
and learn more and more how to love
and how to live.

For where there is love,
there is life.
And where there is life,
there is hope.

Hope can fall so silently,
a necessary aspect
fuel to the poet's mind.
Like that light discoloration you find
on a book you've enjoyed several times.

Or the feel of a fresh piece of stone
smoothed perfectly
sliding on the lathe under your hands.

He said "there is always hope
and the strongest and the bravest will always keep it close to them
for if you surrender hope
then love was right to leave you."

But theres still an anticipation
every time they mention her,
like a cool breeze
causing a convulsion
as shivers run down my skin.