A Exercise in Time [poem]
We fence so much within our puny minds
and think we’re free. All of us are guilty
of this crime. Both you and me.
So let’s experiment — see where things will go.
Unless we try things out for real
we’ll n e v e r t r u l y know.
Imagine what it would be like
without our measurements of time —
no hours or minutes to unfold;
no months or years
(no neither new nor old)
no seconds, days or centuries
(and thus no need for fat agendas
to-do lists or long inventories).
Perhaps you’ll think this exercise a bore.
Just some clever trick to make you feel
unsure of where you stand in space
and history’s craggy flowful interface.
So what!
If we take some steps back from this life
and all its fool distractions hanging on
a knife’s edge by a thread which threatens
soon to snap, it means we’ll then remove
our thinking-caps for just a little while
and find out breath consists of more than
deadness engineered by those who
rule our head[ness] — more than styles
and fashions inculcated by the
featherbedded rations given to us on a
silver plate from when we slithered first
into this theatre dark and so accursed.
So go on! Right now! Imagine!
No more seconds, minutes, hours or days
No more months or years to crazy-pave
the path on which you make your way.
Just try it now!
(making sure that nothing interferes).
It’s fine; I’ll stick around. I’ll still be here.
I’ll wait. I won’t be going anywhere.
I’ll stay till late (whatever “lateness” means
but here I’m speaking in a way
to make my thoughts more understood).
Though I myself have not yet been
completely pulled out from the woulds
and shoulds and shingled shalls
and one foot stuck in time mentality;
for habits die begrudgingly
and don’t give up without a fight
as you will see if you will join me
on that flight to nowhere’s daughter’s
palace home where I have lately
bareback on a white horse fleetly flown.
So cut all consciousness of time!~
(I know it falls outside
your usual paradigm
but try it anyway
[With me there’s nothing left to lose
nothing left remaining to be bruised
maybe it is that way too with you]).
For if you do
then something huge
will happen in your head.
You’ll find another way of seeing things instead
of having April in your mind or last June’s failed designs
you’ll just envisage one long arc — a vast continuum
which bathes our hearts in waves which we’ve split up
and broken down to manageable signs which
we have fiendishly and likewise squeamishly
labelled “time”
(to represent phenomena which work
outside our know
and way beyond our ken)
yet secretly (if we will let it flow) this arc will play its part
in bringing out the rhyming growth and honeyed loaf
of was and will
and why and how
and all the here and now
of when.
© Alan Morrison, 2019
The Naked Troubadour 