'I Fell Asleep For Twenty Four Years' Poem by Linda Winchell

I was twenty, when I fell asleep
gone and slept for, twenty four?
When I awoke, I didn't recognize
anything, I had seen or known before!

All the streets, seemed very different
some homes I knew, had been torn down!
The people that I met on the streets
looked at my style of dress, as if I were some kind of clown!

I felt as if I had only slept in for a day!
But as I viewed the paper, it said, 'December of 2008! '
But how could that, have happened to me?
I fell asleep, in late of, ' December of,1983? '

Am I like that fella, 'Rip Van Winkle? '
Who fell asleep, under an old apple tree?
No, that couldn't have been the case!
That would have never, gone and happened to me!

While I was passing by a store window
I glanced at my reflection, in the glass!
My hair was down to my shoulders, and greasy!
and my clothes were really, lacking some kind of class!

I had on some, funky bell bottomed trousers!
And a skin tight, silky kind of shirt!
A beard and mustache, framed my mouth and chin!
I looked like some bum like, kind of jerk!

What was I doing? And why did I fall asleep so long?
For now my life, is now a mystery to me.
Was I the same, as I can even remember I was?
Would anyone, even recognize me?

Then out from an apartment window, echoed to me this call!
'Hey mister! what's your name? '
'Aren't you that fella, that said he wanted it all? '
'Then began to drink, and brought his family, so much pain? '

So that was where, I've been those lost years!
Not sleeping, but numbed from all that drink!
Wanting more, but giving less!
What a stupid way, that was too think!

'Forgive me Lord! ', ' And Help me now to be! '
'The man, that you once had made! '
'For I promise to change my life, from here on out! '
Returning those twenty four years!
Which I had not really slept, but had chose to throw away!