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To Be Awake

To be awake,

to be blind,

I’ve never understood the difference.

 

On a parkbench,

on a streetcorner,

silent, idle, waiting

 

for sadness, or the lack of it,

waiting

for the excess of it;

 

to be awake, to not know

is there a difference?

In the water,

submerged

floating, sinking, drowning

 

in sadness, or the lack of it,

smothered

by the excess of it;

 

When I awake, I am blind,

When I awake, I do not know,

When I wait for the bus,

on the street corner,

I am blind.

When I am sinking, baptized, or drowning,

I am dumb.

 

I am always

drowning in sadness, or the absence of it.

I am always

drowning in sadness, or the excess of it.

I am always floating

in the not knowing,

always smothered

by the dumbness of it all.

 

Do you feel the same? Choked to death

by melancholy?

Does some thick smoke cloud up

your lungs?

Is it the melancholy? Is it the

sadness?

Request permission to use this poem
Written by
jonny-bolduc
American
Published
Apr 7, 2014
Lines·Words
38·163
Tags
#sadness
Permission

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