Skip to main content

The Time Machine

As I face the small time machine
And the wires cuddling each other
Like sinners in love, I find my answer.
'Go back and save yourself', they say;
'Go back and this time get your girl'
'You can undo your bicycle accident'
'Why don't you edit your career now?'
'You can correct every error you've ever made'
'You now know what you shouldn't have done'
'Why don't you stop yourself from going
To that coffee shop on the 18th of May?'
'Go back and post that letter a little earlier'
'Don't forget to slap that sick professor'
'Go back and tell your friend the truth
About her husband, without any fear'

They all want me to erase
All the wrong footprints on
The sands of time, and they want
To have a better life,
A corrected, proofread life,
Using my little machine;
But will I be the same person
Once my mistakes get undone?

I press the key, turn the dial
And find myself before a child
Busy with his puzzle.
I know where his mother is now.
I place the last piece of his puzzle
And watch his surprise, in surprise.
He looks more like me
Than the faker in the mirrors now;
I find myself in his young eyes
That houses the soul I have lost
In the hurricanes of life and time;
My soul looks back and smiles
Showing me how ephemeral
Childhood truly is,
And how well I have grown;
In his askance gaze I find
My answer, and I sigh.
'This is what happiness looks like'
I whisper, and before leaving
I show him
Where his mother hides his cookies.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Portrait

The prosaic strokes of her brush made her see The truth she had been trying to bury. "I can paint anything, Jim, but you," she whispered. "I have spent too much time trying to paint your eyes, While the real ones watched me from a distance. And like the end of an evanescing dream you faded And became the white of this canvas I cannot fill. Death, like you said, is just another colour from my box. Tell me, why can't my brush find your face? Have I buried the scent of your love too deep Under the stench of my paints? Will this empty canvas never show me your face And calm the storms in my sundry selves? Give me the strength, Jim, to face you again; To look you in the eye and ask if the sun Shines bright on the other side. Help me find The colour of death in my box, so that You can see me, once again, as I paint you."
Post a Comment
Read more

Solitary Symphonies

Through the quiet of the night walked the three men; Three they were, and a hundred patient trees, who Watched them try to pour fresh colours Into the quiescent melancholy within the greens. Melodic phrases they hummed with strange avidity; Songs which they sang were full of life; But the night was already quiet, cold and dead. The lonesome grass reeds embraced their music Like the cheek of a mother welcomes her tears, And somehow thanked the three strange men In a voice soaked in painful inaudibility. The men were aloof from the deceptions The world out there offers aplenty, with a smile; And so were those trees, who watched the world Burn to ashes, and the creations of the Almighty Soil their souls and the souls of others, Reducing to dust too heavy for the Earth to carry. But that night was the night they had longed for For that night, the men who had remembered the trees Were men who sang songs, gifting soporific euphonies; Men who had flutes in their hands, an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Insignia

The woman beckoned to the phantasmal apparition That stood by her bed, watching in pity, her weary eyes In desperate need of a long sleep sans the anguish; She looked at him, and a smile broke its way out From the vicious corners of her horizon-less world; In the ghostly figure she searched frantically For the pair of eyes that had once housed The promises, the cures, and an enormous castle of sand; But darkness was all that stared back. The woman pulled the blanket down, and looked At her son, by her side, asleep in the shade of tranquillity. The silhouette bent over his son, and the woman Felt a soft puff of cold breath kiss her skin. And then from within the shadow of a man once alive Came the  whisper, in a voice awfully bruised, "I wanted to watch him grow." His fingers reached the woman's teary eye, but All he could do was pull more tears out; Only then did his eyes fall upon his medal; The medal of honour, they called it; It lay on the table Wi...
Post a Comment
Read more