CHANT OF THE WAKING DREAMERS

 by   shaun   lawton   

   Get it down help it across step it up move like water  

Fork it over hand it under never let your dreams be torn down

Stand up to it look right at it in the eye state it over and over

  I won't back down again and again no I won't back down 

My friend my son my brother my sister my father my mother 

My wife my neighbor my coworker my boss my fellow strangers

 No one will ever get out alive every one must face the reaper alone

We're all in it a part of the whole each individual cell in a colony 

 With our role to play along in this building symphony of song 

 A chorus rising and falling through outer space while ebbing and flowing

Along without a trace of evidence left in its wake except for the twinkling

stars strewn forward and back in a grand celestial swarming of birth

and death echoing back in lengthening radio waves of fading reception 

  while we gaze in a direction we mistake as outward oblivious 

 to our place in the expanding branes of creation to be recycled 

  into the permanent installation we might think of as the artifice

of articulation the ultimate portrait reflection shading the emerging

contour of a face beyond the scope of our capacity to receive  

  with the singular exception of a second guessed fate like 

the wavering image cast back from the surface of a rippling lake 

  that catches our attention to arrest us in place on a split mind 

trip of objectification magnifying our individual egos out of proportion

  from the whole until we confuse ourselves with the dream of god 

  in constant tides of awakening even while legion fall back into sleep 

  to be continued in the next verse while the worst is on its way 

 this remains the chant of the waking dreamers we will never back down

or go away because no matter how those who may oppose us try their own blindness will lead them astray because only the true know the way

through the darkness with our eyes shut to step into the den of beasts

  bare handed with our raw and bloody hearts still pumping on our sleeves with courage in the face of danger we surmount every challenge 

  that comes our way with our feet firmly grounded on the current of time and our heads held high with a black hole halo around each one of us we skid and slide and stumble only to tumble onward with trust 

     each one of us a living ghost whose fading image remains 

  as an impression framed in liminal light as the shroud of a memory 

       only polishes brighter like the jewel of an eye that will never rot