Lullaby Machine

Step One: Relax.
Climb the stairs
up to your old room
now rented out to another.
The memories run shallow, quick, & loose up here:
like a comet skimming the cutaneous stratosphere.
What do you recall?

Yukon afternoons when the sun set at 3:00;
the colour and life of L'avenue du Mont Royal;
biking in an autumn storm in Vancouver;
kissing the girl who broke your heart,
all those years ago.

Step Two: Reflect.
Undress your body
and the brain's sensoria are overcome:
you cry and cry, and take it all in.
Does it feel as if the walls are closing in?
As if you're being squeezed out
by forces unseen and torque mechanical?

Once there was myth alive,
radiant stitches of colour in a night sky,
shifting, dancing out a story.
Now you can only rush, impatient,
to get all the little things done on time,
under the soft limns, deadlines encroaching.

Step Three: Recall.
Lately, you've been having flashbacks:
dreams, random visions of the past, nostalgia;
as if the story of yourself is being starved
for nourishment, and now turns upon itself,
eating out its insides, emaciated and withered

It's time now to awaken
and hearken to the Rhythm.
Too long have you slumbered,
sedated, arrested, overcome.
You don't have to worry, no need to fret;
for your chafed spirit can never succumb