Time, Interrupted

“You can’t kill time without injuring eternity”

Said the sage in the woods

We killed time and eternity was served a dent

That whole new paradigm in carrying out a dogged intent

To an end that is only perceived in piles of rubble

And ash, for promises

Of “mentions” on the roster of saints?

The collective Freudian “id” etched with a new bruise

To carry into posterity

A new “original sin”

The fall of man to newer depths

Pre-lapsarian images now in the album of memory

We hear from various shades of holiness

On terrorism’s ugly conundrum

Will it somehow release the gasps that have caught in mid air?

All furled into that “sack” we bear

Which tried unfurling in tri-colors from sea to sea

A show of unprecedented commonality

Shed bias, you are exhorted,

So we embrace again in trepidation

And buoy markets with valiant buy back purchases

Are we ready yet for the second coming?

Late night television hosts, master producers of mean wit

Stare in stupefaction at an audience yet unready for humor

When is it okay to laugh again? To exhale the fear, to press

The reset button on the rhythm of breathing

While you ponder how many diseases could have been eradicated

How children could have learned to read

How hunger campaigns were robbed of their bounty

All discretionary budgets now spent on staving off, what? Whom?

An unfathomable resolve to a cause yet undefined in their brain

Producing a cause in ours we never thought to espouse

Spurred by the replay of hell breaking loose from a blue sky

You flinch as a bird swoops down to the windshield

Allegories multiplying

Echoing Blake’s question, “did he who make the lamb make thee?”

An archetypal sin, a primeval pain sitting on the subconscious

Awakened to a dawn after “ignorant armies clash by night”

Can day be too long?

If our sweetest songs can only tell the saddest tales,

We’ll take sugar substitutes instead

Who can volunteer to rewrite the Candyman’s song?

Autumn starts in four days

Rampant resolve ripening into stark winter white

Unyielding, watchful, still.

First expunge the second original sin

With nanotech precision and care

Let reason offer rules to evil ensnare

The diabolical envoy suffering from an identity crisis

What will the Phoenix look like this time when it rises?

--By Sadhana Seelam