- Vol. 10
- Chapter 11
THE BACK OF TIME
You’ve finally broken the back of time,
letting the minutes drain away,
with a quiet determination
nothing and no one can dissuade.
There is, as they say,
method in madness, where,
mathematically methodical,
imaginary numbers are jostling
for position on the vanishing timeline
to strike root in the arid city square.
Time is a record of the choices you’ve made,
your very own thirty-nine steps leading down
to an unforgiving sea.
But you know this stretch of water well; you know it
like the back of your hand: it’d only take you
a glancing peek, even with eyes half-closed,
to map out where, when and how you would jump
despite the glaring Blood Moon pronouncing judgement, declaring victory, proclaiming a Single Truth.
You imagine your timeline on a motorway,
where madness resides not only on the fast lane,
where squaring your numbers only gives you
negatives with a rootlessness hard to contemplate.
The city’s praying for rain, and is granted
a scorching wind from the North
― eight ― nine ― six ― four ―
breeding atrophy, recruiting silhouettes,
leaving all hopes hoisted by their own petard,
THE BACK OF TIME
as the raging sea wind explodes
with deafening noise, counter-pointing
the wild squeal of the kittiwakes,
waking you up from your nightmare
of losing the dream of the tiny baby alpacas
grazing leisurely in the farm at the bottom of the hill.
But you’re not going to jump ― you’ve noticed
the ring on the unlikely finger, an implausible
decision that should never be made.
Your heart is murmuring a fricative in defiance of
the blackness of the sky, the redness of the moon,
and the coolness of the backhand trick.
There is indeed method in madness, and madness
in tinnitus: delusional, hallucinatory, abrupt.
When time is drained dry, they will stop,
but you wont ― you will go on,
even if there’s no timeline.