There is pain aplenty in the past,
there is time unmeasured in the future,
and the present – rough, uneven suture,
tries to form a scar that wouldn’t last…
Tag: time
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The Journey
Drawing by Calcifer Shepherd
“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed in seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.“– J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Elliott
As I walk through the world in the morning, I walk through chores:
Brush my teeth, feed my flesh, lift my eyes and observe the world.
See the light watch the shadows: frightened and slightly porous
It is braving the dark, but the darkness remains unfurled.Like a puppy, to no avail
Light is chasing its own tail.
Ceaseless effort – no rest, no sleep
Leaves the shadows dark and deep.
In the forest, the room, the mind
They just move as they hide behind,
They never diminish
Fade out or finish.And the dance goes on, like a tide – as it ebbs, it flows.
And the mind wanders off, but off what and off when – who knows?Oh, but time is a funny thing:
Lucky – spiral, unlucky – ring;
Snake consuming its own tail
Has no future, no past, no fail.
With no fail comes no gain – no foul.
As ouroboros tries to howl
It’s unable to rant and rail,
Mouth gagged with a scaly tale…It is time to abandon this train of thought
As it leaves us nowhere and profits nought.
If I look the look, talk the talk
Then I also should walk the walk.As I wend my way through the virgin wood,
All I see are multiple shades of green,
All I hear is hue, hue and cry of birds
Known just by the sounds – a sight unseen.
But my mind gets pulled from the joy sublime
Of the sight and sound, the leaves and birds
To the stinging nettles that intertwine
Unremitting brambles, as sharp as words:
“Why the fuck did I wear shorts?”As I focus on light and sound,
I forget to attend to thorns.
Joy is found, but also bound
By recurrence of cuts and burns.
The annoyances and the strain
Can be taken away by train.The train that blurs the near spares far,
Serenely cloudscapes through heavens glide.
An airplane left antiseptic scar
Amid the clouds, stumble on the ride.
Landscape renews and we in comfort cruise,
But dusty windows engender dusty views.A patch of lights through clouds gives me joy
Untampered, instant and without words.
It filters down softly to alloy
Itself with shadows in subtle smooth sensations –
The joy of pure vision midst the turds
Of unremitting complications.My elasticity declines as I get older –
Of skin and time, and arteries, and veins.
My hands and feet – they are a little colder
Each winter with increase in aches and pains,
As well as other relevant increases
In colds and flu with snottiness and sneezes.
If snake of time contracts then what remains
Is an attempt to stretch the space with trains.Ouroboros of time constricts my breath.
As body shrinks my mind expands – and shatters
Its dissolution congruent with death
But also with infinity of matters.
What cannot stretch can break and reassemble.
Abandon frame, you all who enter here.
Reconstituted, you will still resemble
Yourself to others, even those near
And dear, them, who try to fix in space
Of ageing body time’s dissolving trace.At the end of the day we arrive. It’s a velvet curtain.
The applause increases politely as curtain drops.
At the end of the day you are feeling alive and certain.
Your heartbeat is apparent to you just before it stops. -
Time
Time flows through me like water through a sponge.
It oozes away, leaving a murky sediment
of half-forgotten feelings
and half-imagined events.
And endless waiting.
Sometimes it seems that I have been waiting ever since I was born.
Waiting
for something to happen
and for everything to change.
How?
If I knew, the wait would be over. -
Look-see
Cherries soaking up the sun –
semi-transparent,
sumptuous,
filled with liquid sweetness…
Roses taking the light full-on –
harsh contrast between the petals,
drama concretised in colour…
A fly –
black hole in space,
consuming the light completely,
transforming it into boundless energy,
incessant buzzing.
A quiet afternoon
with time
to look and see. -
Almost, but not entirely, unlike fish.
Underground is deep in places.
Deep under.
Buried in space and time.
Connecting the romantic awe of the past,
when the technology was new
and the belief in its potential – unrestrained,
with the pragmatic helplessness of the present,
when we take a deep breath
before plunging into the unknown.
No longer an exciting miracle,
mysterious yet knowable,
but a complex system,
poorly understood and therefore dangerous.
You have to enter,
to give yourself up to the incomprehensible,
to the frightening and uncontrollable,
on a daily basis.
Just to get from A to B.
That’s how we travel in the close,
crowded space of the city.
That’s how we travel in time,
progressively more complicated.
Taking a deep breath
before plunging into a crowd
like water.
As you go under,
you can no longer hear the rain.
The water does not transmit sound,
it exerts pressure.
Comforting and stifling, it holds you tight.
Deep under. -
Tartan fish swimming through the bones of time
Time is full of voids,
empty spaces devoid of substance or meaning.
You think,
– Where has the time gone?
and there is no answer.
There is evidence:
worn out shoes, wrinkles, bigger digits on the calendar and your pay slips…
But the time collapsed, like an empty balloon, and there is nothing there but a thin film of facts.
Time is supported by a skeleton.
Big, public ribs – wars and discoveries:
a burning child running down a dusty street,
tears in the eyes of a woman who can see again,
a man stepping in front of a tank,
another – stepping out of a shuttle into the void,
facing overpowering odds with the same grim determination.
Small, private bones:
sitting on a curb, waiting to be picked up when everyone else is gone,
feeling your hand on my back while making love – so big and warm,
holding my child, crying in pain and joy,
screaming in fear and frustration at the sight of love slipping away,
laughing helplessly at a silly joke repeated again and again.
Moments of loss and gain,
kindness and thoughtlessness,
Moments that stretch time and give it shape.
Time has bones,
bones that keep you up,
bones that stick in your throat
and make you choke. -
Still life before the storm
As you travel through England, you gain a visceral understanding of space-time continuum, for you can see time affected and distorted by space and vice versa, as you move between villages and towns, between pasts and presents, through pools of frozen time into the rapids.
