This is a poem I’m thinking of submitting to the Writer’s Digest competition this year. Let me know what you think.
And, yeah, I know you’ll all be wondering, so I’ll just tell you now to keep you from having to ask. It’s Chris O’Donnell.
I Feel Alive….
I feel alive…
Like, what it means to feel alive–
Not just surviving, simply pressing on….
I feel alive, all full of life:
Vibrant, virulent, vital.
In a storm, a terrible storm all raging,
I am become the lightning strike.
Flare, fire, discharge.
Explosive and blinding and impossible to ignore.
I feel alive….
At midnight,
all the world asleep,
And the clouds conceal the paltry silver lights
and the wind’s a whisper, nothing more….
I am become the huntingbird’s shriek
The wolf’s sharp howl
The piercing cry of a predator, so mighty in his element.
I feel alive….
In the desert,
I’m the rain, cold as ice on burning skin.
In a blizzard,
I’m a fire, pop and crackle and warmth that almost hurts.
In your dreams,
I’m the moment that wakes you screaming, or smiling, or panting for breath.
I feel all full of life:
The biting of a bluster wind,
The whipcrack of a breaking limb,
The shattering of fine stained glass–
or of expensive crystal–
The bitter taste of blood,
The thunder of your heartbeat
when you’ve run too hard,
The pang of hunger, want, or need.
I am become loneliness and violence and pain…
And beauty, sweetly whispered or crashing down in waves.
I am become all the shining, pounding, loud sensations
that make a man alive.
I feel alive…
because of you.