An hour passed,
pausing time,
peering into the eyes
of fleeting moments.
An ice cube—
defiant in its melting,
lingers like leaking water,
tapping against
the pendulum’s pulse.
A fruit basket,
still-life on the wall of nostalgia,
suspended between
phantoms and phenomena.
Fruits never consumed,
untouched by time’s
ruthless chewing machine—
where tick and tock
grind rock to sand,
mountains to Saharas,
to slip through the throat
of an hourglass,
turning its wheel,
spinning time.
An hour,
slipping from its frostbitten carcass,
stilled within the poised marionettes
of now.
An hour,
gazing into a past
that never pauses in the present—
where time itself is frozen,
fermenting into memory.
An hour passed
in the arms of silence—
a silence so bottomless
it frames candlelight in frozen wax,
impregnates lines into volumes,
turns blankness into paintings,
stitches gaps in dementia
through pixels assembling
in infinite visions.
Endless possibilities of becoming one
in the faceless swarm,
wandering grey roads
that mop the borders
of black and white,
blankness and horizon.
A past—
the sediment of now.
An hour—
suspended in the fractures of eternity,
staring at the flame of now,
dancing like the lead of a wine barrel
to the storm of its own fermentation—
formless yet present,
a prisoner of its own orbit.
The absurdity
of rolling the boulder uphill,
of clock hands chasing
but never arriving—
a boat with uneven oars,
always rushing,
never moving.
An hour—
adrift.
Vacillating on the river of the present,
floating on candlelight,
threading the throat of an hourglass,
rippling water with its passing.
The spaceless now
claims air, water—everything,
creates waves,
presses against my eyes,
pauses in a lurch,
cradling ethereal beauty.
It screams:
Time isn’t just an assembly line!
At least for an hour,
let us be free.
Let us have souls
that extend beyond time.
Let us feel the weight of being alive,
adrift in a floating boat,
lurching on the river—
a moment of leisure
for the slave oarsmen
of the clock’s hands.
Time pauses—
watching itself pass,
a masterpiece
visible only in motion.
An hour—
a bird trapped in the cage
of an unending spiral,
a film reel of a fly.
Like a strawberry
that never flowered
in the mouth of thirst.
Like a grape
that never jingled
through the winding lungs
of an unfolding vine.
Like the unborn fragrance
of a blossom,
lost beneath the sweat
and stench of a carnival crowd.
Like the instant a train departs,
vanishing behind the eyelid
of perpetual departure.
Like morning dew
on the lashes of an old soldier,
watching over his own prison.
Like the last sip of water
in the dry mouth
of a sacrificial lamb.
Like a symphony
trapped in the wand
of a maestro.
Like the virgin soul
of a tramp,
who has sold everything—
but her soul.
