What Makes Me Wake
By Logan Tyler Mott
These walls can speak
And but a whisper they need
to deprive even a titan of spirit
And destroy the most unconquerable creeds
to break the mightiest of nobles
And render mountains to seed
And only a man emptied, but for dust
Haunted only by these costly sorrowed dreams
questioned always, and bereft of trust
left only with unsatiated need
Alone, he is tortured in this silence
In this cell of more than iron and concrete
In a nearly invincible cage of spirit and surrender
That can shatter the gods of the faiths under its feet
Everyday that rises, he questions
with a grimace, he strains under the weight of grief
Not ever shrugging away from the enormous effort
Enduring, despite the hopelessness of relief,
In the emptiness, he must ask of himself
from where next his strength will be summoned
within these smothered embers of his belief
Yet still, he shall wake into these dying days
raging resolutely against their feeble light
knowing well the horrors that will await
to welcome him at the sun’s last pale might
Time and time again, he will rise from the nothingness
haggard and desperate, carried only by hope and tired beliefs
The embers of his heart’s spirit will rise yet with him
And somehow conquer the bleakness of this waking sleep
Visions are all that stay to feed him
This fevered faith like madness in his eye
But even in the dust of grandeur and hope
There will blaze from dusk a glitter of light in his mind
A temper will beat on in him
to the steady fires he keeps in his heart
So long as he can question:
“I can?”
Fate will silently answer and beckon:
“You MUST!”
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