Aware That I Am Real

Aware That I Am Real
© Surazeus
2023 12 07

The voice at the other end of my life 
calls me to swim in memories of the time 
I first became aware that I am real 
while rising ever upward toward the light 
that shimmers through eccentric waves of thought 
till I burst through clear surface of the sea. 

The moving water is no metaphor 
that carries my mind across the vast void 
through repetition of elegant waves 
which return to the beginning of the end 
with each expression of sorrow-bound joy 
atoning for the words I never speak. 

With the ax Daedalus chops down the tree, 
then with the saw he cuts it into parts 
which he assembles in the cart with wheels 
that bears the statue of the formless god 
his mind invents from nothingness of hope 
while children strew it with flowers and fruit. 

His son refuses to wear the wood wings 
that he invents to escape from the tower 
which towers over labyrinth of halls 
he designed to trap monster of desire 
the young princess bore from seed of the bull 
who laughs at children learning how to fish. 

He cannot rest after working six days 
to build the palace with ten thousand doors 
so Hercules can find his way back home 
though he wanders lost in the Underworld 
after drinking potion of mushroom mead 
to search for Venus in dark swirling mist. 

If they decide to fight over the girl 
who hides in shadow of the apple tree, 
Daedalus and Hercules would destroy 
beautiful garden where wild Maenads dance 
ten thousand years as empires rise and fall 
to prove fertility could conquer death. 

Instead they reconcile knowledge with strength 
in shining wisdom of the singing nymph 
who climbs the wind-swept pyramid of skulls 
to reign over vast kingdom of the mad 
who fight each other for whose god is real 
while the Earth keeps on spinning in the void. 

The boulder that rolled off the mountaintop 
one million years before I wake from dream, 
and lodged against grassy bank of the stream, 
realigns ceaseless current of star light, 
so when I pluck apple from Tree of Life 
I will remember timeless glow of love.