Each Day I Wake
by Mohamad Said Bazzi
(July 13, 2022)
1 /
I wake up differently each day I wake
Some days it’s out of breath I wake
And other days it’s from the dread
Of burdens unfulfilled
And some days still
These modest muscles
Kink and clench to wake me
These hapless organs, too,
Can strain and push me out of sleep
It’s always push and pull,
From wake, to yonder, then here again
2 /
I recoil sullenly from the trembling shivers
Of my daily leaving
I linger passively in the warmth of life
My jaw and shoulder press into my lumpy cot
My bony fingers burrow into tender mingling folds
My ear and nostril drown into the quiet depths
My wing lifts round to shroud my eyes
And vanish me
To the remaining moments of the night
3 /
Discordant are the voices
That older hearts can hear
The secret whimpers of a suffocated wish
The pacified regret of misled youth
A murmur from a lung, a feeble thirst
Fateful deteriorations and frail connects
A thinning shoulder-blade,
More and more translucent,
Like lucid cartilage,
Now at last lets in the cosmic light