Time Spent by Joey Ng

Time Spent by Joey Ng

With each passing image of inner thoughts
Amplified and televised as a whole,
Through the full day like on cruise control.
We fail to pay mind to how we do time,
It doesn’t hit until it’s your own dime.

With each event coming past me, backwards,
Flooding fast, perfect sight in the mind’s eye.
Each detail becomes one of scrutiny,
Subject to a great litany of tests,
Leaving all time to digest this distress.
Let it hang, dry, and fold it up neatly
So when time comes it falls promptly to me.

In the blink of an eye 5 years have passed,
So fast, speeding without vision, time lapse.
This sullen entity slaps on the mask,
Shunning the times we relapse in laughter.
The aftermath proves to be disturbing,
Unnerving how quickly it came to be,
an injustice of the highest degree.

It perpetuated, understated
Self-worth, every limitation unearthed.
But to forget leaves us vulnerable
To each vulnerability itself.
Only a fool forgets so I’ve been taught,
Fraught with fight, abandoning prior thought.

But with this renewal and refusal
To let it infatuate, at long last
I evaluate this arduous trial,
each mile before it settled single file.
Long as the Nile, pray for me on this path.
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Still Life by Sharon Olds

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