Disconnect | A Poetry Chapbook

10 | Time

Time has no concept
I was backstage a moment, and the very next, on set.
Yesterday, I was dreaming of today
And just today, I realized it's been years since then.
Yesterdays are all falses and lies
A memory that only stumbles and dies
In my head, with the future unfold
Like it was expired, musty and a stale chicken roll.

Even amidst my mess
Which I've grown to like so less
With each passing day now
I'm still digressing, I'm not sure how.
And everything's changing for the better or worse
A maturing horse or a crow in coarse
Nevertheless, the air is eroding over the course
Of time- it's cruel on the land it birthed
Emptying every soul like it was earthed.
And don't even start with me- I'm just as hollow
Leaving the steps back for nobody to follow.

Time has killed me over time
I was not given a chance to pick my prime.
In a timeless crime
Just at the cost of a timely dime.

~ Ithmam Hami, 17th October, 2022, 1.47 am

Short Explication

Time is a bizarre subject to base a poem on. The fact that I will never be able to comprehend it's origin, cycling and cease exhausts me and it was unbearable particularly around the time I wrote this poem.

I categorized this poem as hypnagogic because here I took up a progressive style of writing the poem by sketching time as a metaphorical matter with dreamy colours painted all over. It's almost metaphysical yet realistic when understood.

Sometimes time is totally incomprehensible, so the opening lines adopt that tiring tone. In fact, the entire first verse is suggestive of how time is so elusive, and transient that it's almost frustrating to never be able to get hold of so. My favorite part of that verse would be-

Yesterdays are all falses and lies
A memory that only stumbles and dies
In my head, with the future unfold
Like it was expired, musty and a stale chicken roll.

Despite being a nostalgic man, I resent the negative connotations that my past contains and the positives I know I'll never get back again. Because they were done- and I analogized them with an inedible chicken snack.

The first half of the second verse spots me in the mix of my deterioration as a personality- which I felt was confusing and I partly blamed the timing of my decisions for it.

A maturing horse or a crow in coarse

I was wondering if all these sufferings earning me any maturity at all. Or was it all a downside? Another of my endeavour in reflecting metaphorical. duality.

The second half paints time itself as the villain of my story, as I believe it only hurts people and their worldviews, before going back to my personal standing in all these as a self-obsessed, self-loathing individual as I am.

The last verse was an attempt to rhyme out a flow-like progression- only to sum up the narration thus far. However, my approach was that of a narcissist's. I wouldn't blame myself (although in other poem around the same time, I did- for some reason, not in this one) rather accuse the abstract yet the realest existence of 'time'.