Kit Kelen #1118 - a few modest proposals (to deal with there not being enough hours in the day) [for godsbother]

1118

a few modest proposals

to deal with there not being enough hours in the day

(for godsbother)

occupandi temporis

begin well buried under the covers

not safe

but safer there

all kinds of stuff still stuck in your head

mix it up with hope, despair

thought of getting up earlier

there was always never going to bed

then give away the rhyme

have all your music incidental

prop eyelids up in the Land of If-Only

(original hypothetical)

… for instance if there were less to decide

if the world were smaller

(it once was)

if we could only go back in time

remember the Noble Numbers

and the call to name each prayer?

we do live out the paradox

every machine is a failure

but once they’re in the world we’re stuck

offer up whole lives in tending

or think of revolution!

ye know not the one

the smashing of clocks was tried early on

and though no one has yet stared one out

they now and then do stop own volition

still the hours spin on

abstract of all device

live here

and where they stop

not ours to know

like the spinning wheel of death on the screen

how fondly familiar

can do something else while you wait

peg the washing out

you can bury yourself in the work

and there you’ll have gone

one foot after another, go

there was burning the candle at both ends

drowning in a clepsydra

or get the bends

from too long down

give up the commute

try circular breathing

decimilisation was attempted

(by the French of course,

and the rest of that enthusiasm caught on) –

ten long hours, each a hundred minutes

Nietzsche said there were a hundred pockets

and they hung him out to dry

there were a hundred days of Sodom

there’s a thousand years to your Reich

since then it’s been all about accuracy…

this was never the way to be in the moment

the arrow never stuck air

it flew

if only we sat by a great golden throne

I’m sure that nothing would happen

and hell is frozen too

don’t look back

from that last step’s a doozy

or she’ll be whisked away from you

you’re salted like a fish in it

this stuff’s as bad as money

you measure your length with

ever since we stopped waiting for Christmas

have you noticed how it’s come faster and faster

lost track of the shopping days

conventional methods have got us nowhere

but they have wasted us

clearly, a new approach is required

lengthening Earth’s orbit appeals – but that would only give us more year, more days

(might be good for global warming though, to keep the sun a little further off)

there’s freeze the world’s tilt at the right day in Spring

(getting everyone to agree is the trick)

perhaps there’s a pill

or we’ll invent it

we may have already been swallowed

crawl into the new contraption

à la recherche du temps perdu

together we find those eggs bears

sit to hatch

and are they not the picture of patience

waiting for a crucifixion

one cross each

no jostling

a tree to either end the world

snake for patience

axe for light

and then there are last moments

say your forevers there

but never really know

life’s flash

and then you’re the ash

but not now

not now

darling

delight

in a little stillness of mine

and with my wits about yet

stretch a thing till it breaks

[call it I-was-once]

consisting of no parts at all

round it

with a little sleep

because the ages there

are open

I suggest

simply lose yourself

in the story

just a moment

paid out

in inattention

compounds the interest here

worlds inside

and worlds out

too hot to bother God today

go into the garden

the forest

the green

take up one’s time

with the sky

never step in that river twice

but watch the way we go