lost man

another sunday morning
lying in bed
9:45
don’t want another day in the life I’m in now.

when I look inside I see
dresden and berlin
after the firebombs
tokyo and san francisco
after the big ones
a black and white landscape of rubble and ruin
stretching from horizon to horizon
like a nightmare scene on some faraway planet
abandoned and forgotten by god.

when I look inside I see
a teacher who doesn’t teach
an artist who creates nothing
an explorer who’s afraid to leave the house
a lover with no one to love
a healer with no one to heal
a priest without a god
a body without a soul
a blindfolded boxer lost in the woods
exhausted
throwing punches at nothing.

I came back from the dead into a life that’s not mine
I woke up in a temple that’s been destroyed
I don’t know how I got here or
what to do about it
how do I find my way out of this place
how do I remember who I am.

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The lost man by Rick Belden, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.