SMOKE DANCE - II

August 2026

TRICKERIES OF TIME

That sneering jeering prankster — time,

Fickle, flimsy, shapeless, fleeting,

Traipses on in mocking pantomime.

Sensual, sensuous, stocky or slender,

She can be a calamitous storm,

Or do a delicate twirl, choose to be tender.

Teasing, seducing, making you her slave,

This curvy, callipygian, callous coquette,

Entices you all the way to your grave.

Past is present is future is dust,

Pupa to larva, changing on and on,

Looming mortality, yet the life, the lust.

Inventing coherent ends,

Inventing definitive beginnings,

Yet just a river that flows and bends.

A ceaseless yearning to belong,

Wraps itself around another wisp

Losing itself in a desperate song.

No story is ever complete;

A journey without destination,

Tragic is comic, bitter is sweet.

You don’t see how you are seen,

Like memory, fluid and flawed,

Red can be crimson, blue can be green.

What if time gets tired, curls up and dies

Or if it never really existed,

All was just a bunch of lies.

Seeking meaning, purpose, why,

My dear not-so-sapient human,

You make the universe laugh and cry.

Know this little bird in your nest,

There’ll be days of frenzy,

There’ll be nights of unrest.

Did that lone seagull fully well know,

When it began walking away from the flock,

Did it know it was soon going to go?

We saw it again the very next day

Curled on its back,

Motionless on sand near water it lay.

Why cheat the future, tailor the past,

When nothing ever began,

When nothing will ever last.

~*~