when time died
we were frozen
— blocks of inaction
no one would ever know
no light traveled to eyes
no vibrating air entered ears
no bioelectricity zipped down neurons
no cells broke down and died
no memories were formed
no tick-tock of clocks
no clip-clop of hooves
nothing moved or witnessed
everything did nothing
&
never was everywhere
the day time died
I stare into a rushing stream.
For me, time flows as in a dream.
But the stream knows only one flow —
its tune an endless allegro.
Lord willing -n- the creek don’t run dry.
I’ve heard it speculated that all times exist at once, and that our consciousness merely shines a light on a sequence of nows. But it sure feels like the past frays; that it’s dissolving from the edges. Worm-eaten in a way that works its way to the heart. The center reads clear for now, but one day… poof, it’ll be lost.
You’ll awake to find whole tracks of life are lost — like slides that were water damaged in the flood.
What happened in 1997? I’d need some sort of prompt to even make a guess.
Precognition?
I barely have post-cognition —
which is to say, memory.
I have memories of memories of a world that never was.
Cobbled together hopes, dreams, and fears made into a montage of me.
One could chip away at what never was, but I’m not sure reality could support it’s own weight.
What was might end up a toxic rubble, steaming away into nothingness.
in the space of a blossom’s drift to earth
i feel the gravity give way below
i’ve all the time for terror, shock, and mirth
as tics and tocks go viscous in their flow
each emotion will be given its due
stretched out as if by hands that squeeze and pull
and i can feel, better than see the view
as the planet hangs in a peculiar lull
by the time i start to see the humor
i’m bouncing off the pavement on my back
has my mind been rewired by a tumor?
or has my train of mind slipped its track?
then a blaring horn fills the silent void
and return the kindly and the annoyed
some say time is a block —
a finished work,
not full on one side of the present and empty on the other —
all causes and effects are settled —
except the causeless first cause
and the effectless final cause
we worm our way through time
like a worm chomps through an apple,
rather than building a future along time’s arrow
you’ve clocked me on atomic time
dragged me below the water line
but you don’t know from whence I’ve come
blank, teary-eyed, and feeling numb
weary from my endless travel
my throat parched, the sound of gravel
still you pull from me a charred word
but it feels distant and absurd
somehow he thinks that he will find
somewhere among the broken time
a time shard that tells the story
lost city, ditched and hoary
weary wanderer drowned down there
pulled from green waters by his hair
“but who was the evil culprit!”
i once heard screamed from a pulpit
the funeral for a future me
i heard the word i could not see
found by some old man of means
who could see behind the scenes
but to know the truth, he could not
secrets hide in bits time forgot
Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali
i saw a faceless clock tower
it lacked a mouth to shout the hours
and so it was that time stood still
precariously perched upon a hill
ready for some unsteadying force
to send it on a careening course
with the hapless village below
That speck of sand
that you can barely see
is a planet to the particle
that sits on either side of it,
awaiting a wave form collapse.
Your mind can’t roam out
to the tip of the spiral arm–
let alone to the leading edge
of space as it accelerates into…
5 billion years or 5,000,
it’s all the same to you.
And anything less than
a microsecond isn’t worth
being called time–
[though it’s half a life time for muonium.]
Such a tiny window
through which to seek
the sum of all knowledge.
A sweep second-hand betrays your modernity
A glint unrecognizable throughout eternity
Not all slow time dances out the same
Gooey time stretches to a break in the rain
Tom-toms string out in slow motion
Lost before the vastness of an ocean
The massacred were buried shallow
Their murderers never saw the gallows
Legends said that ghosts rose up
Dead partaking of a proffered cup
To magically roll back the killing time
But clocks refuse to yield for crime
Running dumbly down the street
She bows to touch the guru’s feet
But the world is in chaos down
On the burned out side of town
Cashing checks for weekly wages
Stuck in time across the ages
Tiger Riding for Beginners 