VOLUME 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS

TIME



According to ancient wizards, time

is a private infinity of personal rhythms

expressed only in the present,

once nicknamed the now-ever.

 

Like the universe the center

is where you are, there is always time.

The Tao of design is up to you,

there is no master plan.

 

The outer forces of the world

corrupt the inner power of time

with ever accelerating ritual

until it doesn't matter how much time you have.

 

A junkie never has enough.

So, ancient patterns have ceased

and burgers on the run

have left no time for buttercups.

 

You spin like a Birkhoff bagel with a buzz inside

that leaves a tangled skein of chaos.

You listen to the techno-warble of cesium photons

peppering each jerky, animated tic-tock,

in hoc signo clepto... stealing every impulse.
 

Barnsley's dried old computer fern

has no stuffed fox to molder with.

Electron spores pixilate the floor of my head

while Hawking's monotone defines new turf.

 

To augur by crossing bird would expose

a high-tech Merlin with too much power

and a big blue eye in the planetary storm;

squat blue demons on the Hubble's lens.

 

That bronze liver will not aid your divination,

will not show the Celtic symbols, Roman dates

to worship planets, runes, and Ogham notches

of nerve ending on its ass-tree calendar heaven.

 

Heretics question the metal wheel

that drives the bell clock tower knell

as lifestyles learn to run on Jacuzzi time.

No one under thirty cares what time it is.

 

Amid the maze of immediate concerns

in an overscheduled world,

the ants appear out of control.

The yardstick of ancient scratches

 

measures other meaningless scratches

in a slow death march of scratches,

against the scratches of those even more

profoundly, inexorably lost in time.

 

No contest, no pearl-beaded eclipse,

the sun and the moon blend beside you,

stretch familiar seasons before you where you

heave out-of-breath to the bebop of being.

 

 


ŠJimmy Warner Design, 2010