Today, 2020

Seavey van Walsum

everyday

Beige sludge smudges memory

like sand sifting out from under the tracks

I can no longer tell if

today is grey, just as yesterday was a monotone buzz

Just as the first day my reptilian legs found solid ground

Or just as the day I was born – the first time around – was

Positive splits and productivity spirals

Kronos treads onward and our

Trends tip downward with environmental stress

We procrastinate, decrastinate, acrastinate, or whatever we do now–

there is no end objective; pleasure’s point’s superfluous when

everyday

You wake up and it’s the same 24 hours

everyday

Your pay is scaled back and all you do is watch

everyday

You log onto Your job in bed and You can’t enjoy the scandal

everyday

You wait for a blip to send You a relief check

everyday

You notice You’re on 30% capacity

(all You ever asked for was Time; here are wet, digested bushels of it)

everyday

Beige sludge smudges memory

like sand sifting out from under the tracks

I can no longer tell if

today is grey, just as yesterday was a monotone buzz

Or just as the day my reptilian legs found solid ground

Or just as the day I was born -the first time around- was

Great moons rise and drag one another out, bending each gravitational route Aion is scrambling, and twisting about

folding back and sticking together in fat, waxy ribbons, it’s the end of the knot I can’t find

I diffuse, sink in, become saturated by it

There is no objective; boundaries are superfluous when

everyday

I wake up having sieged Troy in the night,

(a hollow steed atop my neck gets me there)

everyday

I feel fiery dust collects behind my occipital bone

everyday,

I see a man roll back a thunderous stone

everyday,

I feel the first strands of genetic material wind up under my fingernails

everyday,

I see the burning streamer flung at us, half masticated ferns hanging out my mouth,

everyday now

I sit in a clean room which smells of sanitizer and tulips

All the knowledge of the human world

beneath a chrome-brushed tablet

I am as autonomous as my tools

everyday–

Kairos, like a windchime,

Breaks up inertia with cool notes, the music flutters outside my window.

Kids are standing below.

finding a rubber cherry ball in cedar shrubs

Today,

They are playing kickball with their dad

Yesterday,

I think I heard them play the same game, doesn’t it get repetitive?

Now,

Ta-da! The ball is found, triumphant shrieks fly up, even from the child that can’t talk yet

Their smiles don’t wear masks. They should be more scared than they are, I think. They should be aware of the crumbling parts of the world, I think. They should have an idea, I thin– an Idea–

I put on shoes.

And go outside where the sky is spread out. In theory it scared me but now, I feel alright now, like it’s not all happening all at once.

The windchimes sing out again

The time is right the time is wrong;

But the time is written and it is drawn

the time is the moment and that is Kairos;

This is all the moments that have ever been and is therefore, in some variant, the right one