Times tourniquet

Last week
I had it all
under control.

Last month
I was excited
about the Future.

Last year
I couldn't wait
to be where I am
Today
yet
I cannot say
it right.

Tomorrow will Be
too much
all over again
and then
another
Year
I fear
of ending up
right
Here.

Image of painting by Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/1498–1543) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

On second hand

I don't believe in capital -T-
Time,
But I do buy time
all the Time
whenever it's available.
And I do accept
watches and glances
but not second chances.
I never used to wear a watch
in youth
that is counter-clock-
wise
But Now
the time I live in
I could always use a great Coach
cheering me to go on
to keep up the pace
And what about a beautiful face-
There's something utterlessly
Timeless
about a Fossil.
And while digging up
memories
and backflash dreams
it seems
my heart slows
my brain knows
the battery is dying
there is no denying
when it quits,
so will I
synchronized
wise.



Image By Watchexpert (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Isness

Something said, It Is
All that I can do As Is
It Is, what It Is.













Image by Fernand Khnopff [Public domain or CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Ends of the Authors we read...

It will be better
for future generations
Now
that you're gone...
You see,
they will be spared from the tragedy
of losing a(n authorly) dear friend, a confidant, mentor,
a loved one
Zero can replace
from (book) end to (book) end
-From America To Italy-
tears between salty seas
I could not be amore triste
(mi manchi)

Lucky am I
to be born too late
to suffer the agony
of losing more,
Italo, Borges, Aldous, and Hesse, all the poets
gone before, so many I adore-
The words cut off, there is The End
of literary legends and magnificent minds,
such as He
Now freed from his earthly libraries
to live for all our eternity.

Image above painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1898 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Image By Lesekreis, taken 10/14/2012 [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons.

"I can prove to you that every age has interpreted certain events in the light of this apocalyptic text*: events such as comets, cows with two heads, and so on, were all spoken of as signs of foretelling a dramatic day of reckoning for the human race. Specialists are aware of this and write about it, but the general public refuses to believe it. Let's say you have to console a friend who has been destroyed by his wife. The man says to you: 'I can't go on living.' 'Come, come,' you say, 'all of us have been deserted at least once, if not more often in our lives. It happens to everyone.' This argument has never consoled a sad lover. He thinks of his problem as graver than the ones you describe to him. In the same way, the argument that all men are mortal has never consoled a dying man! 'You're dying, old friend, but be reasonable, it happens to everyone!' If he has any strength, he will slap you in the face. So what can you do to persuade people who believe that the end of the world is nigh, that people from every past generation have seen it coming before they did? Do you say that it's sort of (a) recurrent dream, like the dream that our teeth are falling out or that we suddenly find ourselves naked in the middle of the street? No, they'd reply, This  time, it's more important than all the other times."**

*referring to the Book of Revelation
The preceding quoted text is excerpted from the book "Conversations about the End of Time"**

**Eco, Umberto, Catherine David, Frédéric Lenoir, and Jean-Philippe De. Tonnac.Conversations about the End of Time. New York: Fromm International, 2000. Print. p. 181

Call me Callous

I must be sick.
Nothing sounds good.
Everything tastes suspicious.
Something stinks-
and not in just one place.

And I am switching on and off
like a light, from flaming heat
to icy sleet.
I shiver at my ashen image.
All is muted in grey,
like that one fat cloud
shorting the light behind
that does not desire
to move
me, but instead
hovers in hauntology.

I must have thrown out my smile,
I haven't seen it in a while.

Denial is a thick word
that extends in all tense directions.
And when I look back,
it was there and here.

I cannot speak right.
It is not your misunderstanding
it is my bad, I prose,
I left out the important details.

All my forgotten failures
have been waiting for me
to give up,
to add them up,
to throw up
the shit in the fan
and splatter the walls
with my acidosis.

Etching insults on my skin,
wretching my brain,
I am stained with vile regret-
yet, it may be a nasty infection
of my excommunicated ego,
though -I'm still -I think
I must be sick
of myself.



Image of painting By Artist Edward Prentis [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Power-saver mode

I need a volta
the current
situation is shorting
my fulfillment
and stunting my growth

and a volta would do the trick
and a volta sounds like a charge
and a volta would be shocking
to the system

A volta is what I need
to insert into my life, poetry, right
-Here-
left justified
and
Now-
About us...

After all the loves I've met
it is you I regret
letting plug into me
sapping my signal strength
sucking my juice dry

filling up your,
well,
wishes and kisses
are for children who have it all
in potential

conservation comes
in steady waves
don't save yourself,
do something else
shocking
or nothing at all
shutting down...



Image By George Eastman House [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons, Electric lightbulb patents. 

Never a need to wonder

Like a nickel found
behind your ear
it happened so fast
nobody noticed how
it got to where
there was
never a need to wonder
anymore
about any thing.
More than a sleight of handy
to always have the answers
in your pocket,
where change used to go-
you know
billfolds and money clips
(now it's all just strips and chips)...
Tho' for what it's worth
I bet
we all still like to stash some cash-
like philosophic questions
often posed as origami
or in amor plait fati, ah yes-
currency well spent
now
we know,
with nary a query
that goes unsolved.
Yet the soul enigma remains-
have we evolved?
And now
I wonder-
what my smartphone would say.



Image of Don Adams by General Artists Corporation-GAC-management. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.