TRANSLATION

Picture Courtesy: www.metacom.org


Not for the want of money,
Yes,
Money,
Quintessence,
Magnificence,
Earthly reverence,
Embodiment of the human presence.
Fleeting existence,
That monetary essence,
An evanescence,
Seducing common minds without conscience,
Overcompensating their diffidence.
Money does bring relief,
But only for a little while in the end,
It is a drunken escapade,
Inebriation,
On the eve of a restless dawn,
The beautiful morn,
Come sunrise,
With all the darkness gone,
The stench of alcoholic relief
Slowly washes away,
Leaving behind an insipid taste,
The borrowed skin you wore
Magically melts away,
Leaving you hangover,
Feeling poor,
For in it was your
Wit,
Brawn,
And iron clad reasoning.
As you rub your eyes,
Heralding the morning light,
Looking in the mirror,
You get wide-eyed,
Mystified,
Realization then dawns,
For in the mirror,
Stands the reflection of a feathered bird,
Surrounded by scattered pieces of corn,
Money,
It just made you a caged feathered bird,
Pecking at yellow corn.


What about fame, you ask,
Fame?
That’s nothing more than fool’s gold,
The Dutch courage of old,
A roulette wheel,
With ticking clocks,
Ticktock,
Tales,
An illusion of a demigod,
For out of common sand,
Your steps throw up dusts of gold,
With multitudes,
Behind you in droves,
You become a hive,
Calling out to bees,
And yes they do come,
Not for you,
But rather honey,
To them, you’ve become money,
But when drunks lose track of time,
They sell their souls,
To thieves of time.
Gradually as life gathers
Your sands of time,
The end draws nigh
With each sunrise,
Flirting with the clouds up high,
Mortal man with dyed eyes,
Till your descent from atop a perch,
It happens so fast,
You fail realize you’re without shoes,
Then you trip on uneven ground,
A bruised toe or much worse,
Common ground your famous gown,
Footsteps no longer clad in whispering gold,
But rather nothing more
Than ordinary dust.
Glitz and glamour in a hearse,
With missing tears,
The famous curse,
Thinning peers,
You begin to fall without a care,
Thinking the crowds still there,
Freely you fall,
But just before you touch the dirt,
Out to common ground you begin call,
Naked,
Not even common grass gave you a shirt,
Neither did trees embrace your fall,
Dirtied
With ego battered and bruised,
You begin beg the dirt,
Please swallow me whole,
I’m nothing more than a mime of time,
Fame lasts no longer than half after nine,
Sleepy lull in time,
Snapshots far expensive than cheap wine.


Timeless time,
Encapsulates us all,
Our days and nights,
Nothing more than flashing lights.


Up in the sky,
I spy,
A bird in flight,
Rise and fall,
Flesh and feather,
No different from one another,
In sync together,
A component of time,
Seamless and boundless,
That really is time.


Yet when you look up into the sky,
You just might see divinity in a bird,
A feat of nature that boggles the mind,
Testament to a higher power.


In comes science,
Equations and facts,
Hollow bones and feathers,
In banks and turns,
Gliding on warm air,
Plain and simple,
Pretty ordinary,
Explanatory,
Nothing more than a two-legged winged animal.


We all look at the world
Through different eyes,
From different sides of the divide,
Yet in time,
We all stand motionless,
Staring up high,
At a bird in flight,
No arguments there.
Religion, divinity in time,
Science, unraveling mysterious time,
Poetry, emotion punctuated with time,
Regardless the infinite facets of time,
Did we all not just see a bird up high?
Different translations of time,
This is why I bother to write.