THE ESSENCE OF TIME

ILLUSTRATION: RIDWAN NOOR NAFIS

The essence of time is not what it seems.

Fleeting and seeping through cracks in hell and space,

Learning and failing under the universe and its schemes,

Plans that don't deem you enough to fit in any one place.

For in the end that is what we all bloom to be,

Lone, lost ghouls roaming Hurricane Alley, looking for reason to exist.

Knowing not when nor how to be rendered as 'free',

For does such a concept have being in this unforgiving mist?

Words and sounds float like bullets through the air,

Taking special interest in the voice in your head.

Your dreams lived by many and it only seems fair,

For that's all you've done haven't you? You've heard and you've read.

Read of people who did what you couldn't,

Heard them exchanging fables of victories,

You know if only you had the chance you could've.

But time as it does, she limits your liberties.

She sees you and mocks you

She keeps you contained in a box with no air

Because you're only meant to watch with rue

To aid the brave warriors as the sword left to spare.

With dust as your friend and time on their side.

She laughs and she smirks at the tombstone that stands alone.

With no one, no words, no shadow under which to hide,

You're now merely the dried up leaf with nothing left to hone.

For community is all that is left,

Not victories not glories.

But selflessness, namelessness, a face to be kept,

Meaningless tasks and endless short stories.

Blown from existence

From a light to nothingness,

Worth nothing more than mere paper pence,

Like an empty, abandoned and colourless board of chess.