Like all important things in life,
making good use of one's time
is not taught in school

Today, time slipped away silent as falling snow,
Stripped my inner space, slowed the mind-pace
To a snail's crawl where the nature of time is rarely questioned.

This is not just a case of writing pretty words and lines
The kind that makes fine poems that slides easy to the eye and tongue.
Nor do I intend to write blood- stained words of crucified
Christs and soiled sorry memories soaked in sentimental shit!
I sit here wavering between two attitudes of mind. One
Can sit in idle devotion hoping to conjure up some divine presence
The other is a blind unbalanced juggler that gives
In to chaos, like the old court jesters with their bells, forgets all else
To appease some fat-arsed kings and queens who have lost
The use of their laughing gear.

There's only twenty-four hours in a day much of which
Is consumed by anxiety and worry, the children at school,
The commuting, the doctor's appointments, the shopping,the meal making
The grave lack of money, the sleeping,telephone calls.
The unread books and unpaid bills,reading the papers, headlines
That rape and abuse your psyche, and oh yes, don't forget the sex!
The there's TV schedueled to greet you and your children
With more horror,murder/violence

All these things require great haste with certain pernicious effects.
The never-ending lost time tidying, checking,refining, the horse we
Are riding will not stop or slow down, we are like the cowboy
Trying to tame a wild mustang that throws you on your arse a dozen times
We never learn,relax,learn to make jokes. Time weaves a pattern every
Day with a design to tie you down, of a sudden, night falls, still no words
To glorify your verse, this arse-poetica you've spent all day trying
To impress yourself and some fat-lipped editor with a peanut head.
Who never once to you or himself has said,'Oh! This is nectar from the gods.
This is poetry at its very best, but, he/she still makes of it a boomerang
That wings is way back,such waste....

And who, who can avoid wasting time, who gives a monkey's-
What you call it?-who would rather read the numbers on dollar bills
And eat the daily bread of sexologists than feast on the poet's words.
Listen! All you budding Byrons, Burns,Nerudas , Plaths or whatever paths
To fame you play on the computer game. Think,if you can of the greatest
Poet of modern China, Pa Kin, at the age of eighty-five, had
Just been decorated by President Mitterand and invited to visit France.
"To do what ?" the poet asked,"To meet whom?To find what of interest?"
"You realize," he added, as though to apologise for these questions,
"I only have seven dollars left to my name and I don't want to fritter them
Away on peanuts."

Plgrims,fellow-poets, and academics who believe they are, nothing
Is longer than this thing called 'time' it is the measure of eternity, it makes
Forgotten everything unworthy of posterity, and it immortalizes the
Great things...write on write on.....
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