The Invention of Time

Tomorrow keeps us waiting,

and today will never stay,

do you hear the sickly sliding

as the moment slips away?

The time that makes a circle leads us only to the now,

but if you bend it double, then that changes it, somehow.

And hear the anxious ticking of the clock that’s drawing breath,

and wonder at the meaning of the universal death.

But if I took my hand and placed it,

nailed it to the desk,

let bitter iron bloody taste it…

would the present moment rest?

There’s never time been worse than now,

though then was now then, too.

But if you held the passing now,

like no one yet could do,

and dammed it up from now to now,

would something else be true?

But if you took a light and shone it

far out to the stars,

there’s nothing in the sky for seeing

but steel and iron bars.

But if it makes a circle wide, and if it binds the earth,

and makes an image double and so circumscribes its worth,

would that mean thought or freedom or the slipping of the knife,

or somehow touch the mystery of universal life?

Tomorrow keeps us waiting,

and today will never stay,

still I hear the sickly sliding

as the moment slips away.