Your alarm clock is screaming
something in a ghastly language
you don’t understand. Who
speaks this gibberish anyway?
Imagine saying ‘I love you’
in wake-up tones! There
it goes again. Jesus wept,
what kind of lingo, argot,
jargon, patois, rigmarole,
gobbledygook, hogwash
is this? What denomination
of flummery, twaddle, balderdash,
palaver, hubbub, chitchat, claptrap?
The chronometer’s chortling retort:
“The wagging tongue, the tongue-
moving-permanently-in-cheek,
the moonshine malarkey, of time”.
Rattled by that cackle,
you bargain with yourself.
Just another minute.
Sideswiped by that snortle,
you bargain begin yourself.
Only only a minute.
Hee-hawing from that guffaw
you make a promise to yourself.
To breathe into every nook
and cranny of this minute.
(No one will ever have explored
and, upon waking, notated
and later recalled
for the benefit of all beings,
in the exhaustive way you have,
the multiple
and mysterious dimensions
of sixty seconds.)
And then you wake up. And
completely forget your bargain.
And completely forget
to imagine, even for yourself,
let alone for the sake of
the rest of poor, distracted,
suffering, monkeymindkind,
what it would be like
if every single instant of our lives
was as precious to us as this one.
