Tick, tock.

Seconds into minutes,

Minutes into hours,

Words into sentences,

Sentences into paragraphs,

All narrative reversed

While meaning is sucked

Down the plug hole

At the end of the universe.

 

Tick, tock…

 

Time is and always will be 

A perverse engine of creation

And dissipation,

Destroying the past,

Promising a future

Which does not exist,

Guaranteeing the present

Only for a moment

With words which cannot last.

 

Tick, tock…

 

Language is time’s slave,

Full of tenses without meaning,

Each and every syllable 

Forged as a pin

To trap the flapping wings

Of temporality,

To slow the flow,

To stave off mortality.

Who were you yesterday?

Who are you today?

Who will you be tomorrow?

 

Tick, tock…

 

You will be you 

In time effervescing,

Rising toward demise,

Just as language is doomed to die.

Time is outside our prison

Of distinctions, pronouns, 

And prepositions.

Just as the wind and water

Carve the rock, grind it to sand,

So shall our alphabet

Be reduced to dust,

And every word ever spoken

Or read or heard

Will be as atoms to the wind.

 

Tick, tock….

 

 

©Shaun Green 2023

Eulogy #23.

Truth left this morning,

Unsnaking an arm, gathering clothes,

Sneaking out the back door,

No thank you or goodbye.

This is how we die.

 

Love left this afternoon,

Coming home drunk, punching my face

Leaving me with a split lip

And a black eye.

This is how we die.

 

Youth left this evening,

Slamming the bedroom door,

Climbing down the trellis,

Getting into a car with some guy.

This is how we die.

 

I am alone tonight,

With white wine, chips and TV,

Too invested in MAFS,

Too diabetic to cry.

This is how we die.

 

 

©Shaun Green 2023

Sirens.

Sirens in the distance

Signal another night of harm

Emergency vehicles rushing

Along roads like corpuscles

Lights flashing red and blue

On multiple HiVis vests

Turning cops, ambos and fieries

Into beautiful hideous beetles

Scurrying through the wreckage

Scanning the carnage

 

This is a broken town –

Broken up, broken into, broken down

 

With a dire persistence

Sirens in the distance

Turn the night into one long alarm

Ensuring there will be no sleep

While forgone children break and enter

Running rampant as the night is theirs

Broken homes and broken families

Poverty and insecurity

Spewing out crews of little delinquents

Stealing and crashing cars

 

Is the answer to put them behind bars?

Prison does produce a better class of criminal…

 

Meanwhile sirens pierce the night

Echoing along with red and blue light

As the diurnal chase begins

Trying to catch the race card

Despite the fact it never wins

While the government makes moves to

Funnel damaged youth away from jail

Already bulging at the seams

Businesses are groaning

Residents are fuming

Enough is enough is enough

 

This is broken town –

Broken into, broken up, broken down

 

©shaun patrick green 2023.