Time is a curious thing. The old cliché.
Not in a "heavy" Marty McFly way
But how, in one moment, you can pray for it
to grind to a halt.
Perhaps as you pound the asphalt
With your dancing shoes
Gasping, through puddles of ***** and **** and *****
To make the very last Nightlink
Of a heart-breakingly beautiful night out on Dublin streets.
And then another moment be wasting it away,
On writing poems, writing *******, writing the truth,
Or standing on the edge of a very tall library building roof
With the short sharp explosion of brain matter, praying it away
As it mulches on the concrete below.
Head first, to ensure success.
To ensure that for the love of god it isn't slow.
How time must crawl for people who can't move...
Each second dripping as slowly
as the painful near of a near-perfect tap.
Or "faucet" as they call it in America.
But then again we have buildings, pieces of paper, all kinds of crap
older than their whole country so what the hell do they know?
Their policemen shoot unarmed civvies or send them to prison
as a sort of politically correct racial genocide
(because black privilege gets such lovely jumpsuits and body bags.)
Then again, we let priests ****** children here
and think **** is less upsetting than women's rights.
Time doesn't change how consistently wrong people can be I suppose?
If anything we overcomplicate ourselves.
Just think, if I had been born five hundred years ago
I would have died of pneumonia, or something asthma-related.
Or probably gone blind? My eyesight only is getting worse
(although is that to do with my endless-stream-of-computer-screens?)
I feel like that should be worse but I can't bring myself to decide.
Time seems to ask a lot of questions although maybe that is just
because I'm trying to stretch this poem out as long as it takes
before my twenties are over
and my life is more clear and certain
And I have a steady job that I hate
and I am less of a shambles
and have gotten over the depression
and the alcohol binges alone
and the fear of the future
and the self-doubt
and the loneliness
and the sickening
feeling in the pit
of your gut
when you
realise how
slowly
time is
passing
and you want to die.
Or not. I can never concentrate long enough to care.
