I awoke alive to my own aliveness,
The kind of awareness that feels like invincibility;
The kind of aliveness that makes you want to solve everything:
To make every man aware of his soft underbelly,
To make every white person aware that Black Lives Matter;
To make every nut-job awaken to the reality of pandemics – biological, ethical, and environmental.

I awoke facing my own aliveness in a way that feels like victory over self;
Like I could finish every project:
every book, every poem, every screen play, every video clip, every blog post I’ve ever started
but left scattered to the never ending march
exhaustion, futility
the overwhelming burden of consciousness,
and time.

I awoke inhaling the very essence of aliveness,
through every pore of my skin, 
in a way that feels like belonging;
like today will be the day I stare down mortality and make IT shake in its boots
(for a change).

I awoke alive to my own aliveness in that quiet plea of every living human
That says:
I’m here
I matter
And my brief time must somehow
make sense.