Riddled With It

Riddled With It (20th April, 2004, 16.49pm)

Faster than the sky moves, though it
looks slow, standing on the surface, watching clouds from dry land;
thought I was swimming in it, had plenty to waste…
we were all young once; no child without a tragedy understands
it runs out… slipping, like water won’t stay
in the cup of your hands; only a trace, caught
in the crease of the lines in your skin, drawn
by a delicate pen in an unstoppable hand.

Sly, like a double agent, a spy telling lies to each side;
you can’t trust it; never constant, always
changing beat, expecting our steps to match it,
but we’re eternal complainers, out of sync,
so we capture it and write it down, or so we think;
literary; something that lives in old diaries,
labelled, with a year on it; someone you once wrote about,
spidery, barely legible as yourself…
and here, angry, the pen bitten into the paper
as if it were the implement that was mad;
laughter, even though you’re not glad;
smeared ink on old paper; the tears you didn’t plan.

They tell you it’s linear
in scientific speak; that you can only go forwards in it,
never back; so explain away those claws that
reach from yesterday, scratching you back…
and you think you are the master of it,
an illusion sold to you; you imagine you own a piece of it
wrapped around the bones of your wrist:
isn’t that where they placed shackles, once?

Tied to it; the mirror moves with you, but it’s
as if you’re following the leader on the wall,
not the fairest of them all, just a trace
of what you thought you once had:
a face from the past, aged, looking sad;
can’t take a knife to it, separate yourself or others from it,
or sever it, like the boy who sold his shadow;
can’t compress it or stretch it; can’t scatter it…
intangible, but caught up in it; a cast net, a trap through which
you can see a way out; still as glass, loud as doubt.

Faster than light moves, though it
seemed slower once; just
a videotape stuck on play through the adverts,
all old ones.