Time

by Sanghamitra Roychowdhury - Not entered


Time 
 
Sometimes people want to prevent the oscillations of pendulums 
To choose the frequency of the movement of minutes
And turn the hands of clocks back a couple of centuries while 
Wishing they could control entropy or the rate of randomness instead.

Excessive waiting was wasteful, it eroded the other's expectations 
Like flint whittling away at the surfaces of floating coral reefs
Withering our avenues of action like scattered rose petals on coffins in cemetaries. 

It was like carving out a vast void of hollow emptiness while 
Searching for scraps of time to cut with pairs of sharpened scissors
I was the penitent pigeon that I fed, pecking at crumbs as remnants of recall
Summoning up streets where the breezes of your breath and memory still blew. 

I used soap to lather loneliness across a body dampened by disillusionment
Your symbolic sentiments like pieces of paper shredded
Even before the meanings of those thoughts were manifested.

You wanted reconciliation of our elements like rare
Eclipses merging the sun and the moon's alignment
I used to think your mantras were verb tenses in motion
Seeking to maintain the mockery of past unestablished relationships.

We travelled towards different summits of horizons in the midst of your waning energy
Through bisected roads which didn't converge into concentric circles or particular paths
I didn't know when I started or where you ended on this journey.

A fusillade of coughs mixed with fervency and fear
Were the whispered words of silent machine guns with 
Bullets which were thorns of taciturnity that 
Pierced and fragmented a glass menagerie of dreams
As vanished wisps of smoke, life is more ephemeral than it seems  

We should have helped steer one another's souls to shore, I should have
Grasped sturdy arms and glanced into blue eyes for steady seamanship
Locate lighthouses while navigating through channels of change and uncertainity
It was too late for whispered chants from uncovered calyxes of chrysanthemums
I sang the melodious but melancholy hymn of a lover's dirge to sleep every night.

The plumage of a peacock's feathers were reminders of a magenta and azule skyline
Of the cheek of dawn filtering a mind's saturated smog, and futuristic fantasies
Following an eventual epiphany and a multitude of repressed revelations by candlelight.

Birth sign: Not entered
Date created: 1998-08-23 10:08:45
Last updated: 2021-04-14 17:18:08
Poem ID: 50509

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