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