Awake, O Sleeper

Ugh! Awake! - how long has it been? Stumbling around. My face looks unremembered, pale and distorted. The impotent whine of the bathroom fan knocks about like a frustrated poltergeist. I am Lazarus shaking off the wrappings of the dead. I am Beethoven raging in his Ninth Symphony upon the unforgiving bars of deafness. I am a scattered pile of weathered bones provoked by prophecy and restless. And Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Sea and Sinbad's Ship" booms in my ears like a thunderclap of the Messianic Kingdom.