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killdozer-chimp · 2 years ago

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time

Time is a great beast.

With trodding hooves and scratching claws

With a wild mane and matted fur.

Upon its skin, too small to see, we lay.

Our weight does not go unnoticed.

Time drags us forward, one step at a time,

Shuddering and creaking.

Bone grinds against bone, claws dig into the hard earth

If Time had a face perhaps more pity could be spared.

But alas, our world affords no such whimsy.

It remains faceless.

Void.

Blank.

Time takes a step forward

On September 21 2022 I tried to take my own life

Time stops for no one. Even as your vision starts to dim, as the leather cuts into your

neck, time plods forward.

And as long as you know it’s still trudging on, you’re still here.

Time takes a step forward

The next morning I wouldn’t get out of bed

I was admitted to the hospital

Then the inpatient

And soon I found myself in the desert.

Time takes a step forward

In the Bible, Jesus lives in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights,

Tempted and plagued by the devil the whole time.

I believe in no such gods.

Time takes a step forward

Every day I woke up on my foam mattress

Ate dirty oatmeal

And plodded on.

One foot after another

Shuddering, creaking

My own Sisyphean task

My own Temptation

Time takes a step forward

In many ways I paralleled time

Its toil became too familiar.

Every night,

When I would pass beyond

I would dream that my parents came to take me home.

To save me, to relieve me of my burden.

Every morning when I woke, when the illusion ended,

I would feel the smallest pang of hurt.

Time takes a step forward

My temptation was ever present.

In the sharp rocks that lay on the ground

In the rusty ranching wire left discarded in bushes

In the seemingly infinite desert

Full of places to hide

Time takes a step forward

Every day I wished time would end

That some endless wormhole would swallow me whole

That my consciousness could end without me ever being aware of it

That I could cease to be and never have to question what it means to be in the first place

Time takes a step forward

The human experience is more shared than we think

Change is promised, we hit our lows, we don’t change.

We break down, cry, compose ourself in the morning for work.

Because that’s the only option we have

The only thing we know

Time takes a step forward

Yet as much as we say things can’t go on like this they do.

Time drags on, even as its skin falls off bone, as tendon breaks down and tender muscles ripples with anguish beneath skin stretched thin

The beast sputters, chugging on like a broken locomotive.

Sometimes it stumbles under its own weight, but never falls.

Time takes a step forward

As it shuffles forward it tows behind a plough.

This plough turns over the earth, shuffling into the ground what has been.

Places where once life was lived.

Where people laughed, cried, loved, lost, forgave, forgot, remembered, cared, mourned, lived, died.

A bed that was shared

A table that was eaten at

A photo of a loved one

A birthday card

Tilled into the primordial sands

Time takes a step forward

People live in time.

It’s a prerequisite.

We know it exists because we live in it, but time aware of our presence?

Does it exist only because we perceive it too?

When we are all gone, will the beast carry on?

Is the time experienced by us, by me, right here and now the same time that my grandparents experienced?

What about those before them?

Time takes a step forward

Will the beast ever tire?

It matters not.

For now I exist, my highs and lows,

My breaths in, and breaths out.

My loves and losses.

Time takes a step forward

And the beast has no destination.

Its toil is uphill.

And still it shudders forward.

Matted hair clings to grey skin.

Cartilage whines under the load of infinity.

Joints crack and squeak and bones scrape.

Like an engine running on fumes, it jolts and lilts, barely moving on.

Yet it does.

And always will.

For me and for you.

For ever and for always.

#poetry #words be wording #timedobetiming

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