Best Philosophytime Poems
As you ponder each turn that has landed you here,
taut tempo will quicken and frail futures loom near.
Take one somber moment, step away from the din:
The voyage, the detours, the past and what's been.
You look back behind you to retrace every mile.
It bring tears of regret and the trace of a smile.
Hang on first, then let go, due to whimsy or age.
What you keep in the end is the test of a sage.
Fools still ignore the supreme ticks of the clock,
in each change in fashion, embraced by the flock.
Walk on and ignore them, don't bother to chide,
these pathetic lemmings swept away by the tide.
Peer off in the distance as you fight off the chill.
You must climb still further to the top of the hill.
Play the tailor to time, cut and trim, make it fit.
Find the time in your life. Take time to enjoy it.
It is then, that time does mock,
in fractured, punctuated dreams.
Alongside the tick of the clock.
Elusive, as sea serpents in a Loch,
your reflection, not always as it seems.
It is then that time does mock.
"Come, count the years, take stock.
life, expired tickets, you can't redeem,
alongside the tick of the clock."
And there, it comes as quite a shock.
You find yourself adrift, out of steam.
It is then that time does mock.
"You strutted away like a Peacock,
who's plumage means nothing in Death's theme,
alongside the tick of the clock."
Against youth's door, you stand and knock.
But, it is too late and you scream.
It is then, that time does mock,
alongside the tick of the clock.
For the contest, Villanelle Me
Sponsored by Catie Lindsey
Placement: 1st
What is Time
But existence clocked
Hands and face
Always watched.
Dictates our sleep
Our working lives
Who dies
Who thrives.
The dial of life
Rules us all
Some bored
Some have a ball.
Minutes and hours tick away
Here today, gone yesterday
Time is a gift, we only borrow
Time will determine who is here tomorrow.
The fortunate, their time joyfully spent
The worst of us, will time repent
Either or can't undermine
The power of Father Time.
A mountain of grounded rock reaching to the skies
A rabbit burying into a whole
A pig building a house of straw
Why, concrete little pig, brick and sweat
A tree, untrimmed and ungainly
Buzzing insects, foaming with diseases and the chance of death
A mound of sand
A sand castle
A poor sign of engineering
Yet fit for a queen
Build straight pathways, not curving halls little ant
Your purpose is there, it s your efficiency that is in question
Take note from the concrete, the velvet and the vibrating
The ironman working the ironworks in the ironmine
Purpose, purpose, purpose
He earns her iron dollar
They raise their iron children
Time rusts their flawed iron hearts
The silver tongued king rules his copper minded people
The golden patience of time rules the silver tongued king
The velvet soft lover wrestles with the friction of passion
The ninety nine year old Nazi is killed for his crimes
The copper minded populace cheers
Some shed fake diamond tears
And we spin our web of lies
Our empire of cobwebs, time formed truths
Threatened by the subtle breeze of our patient host
True diamond patience of Earth
So the philosopher asks
Riddles with himself
Earth hast no purpose but to be
And to be without purpose is not our way
Yet we unfurl our carpet in its chambers of torrents
And build our houses of straw, and build our mountains of steel
And we expect to persevere
So this purposeless world
Moulded of chance and mutation
It sits by, without reasons to impede
It sits by, as time hammers at its walls, a purposeless measure, the ticking of a clock
The clock ticks, yet the batteries have long passed, the maker long dead
Still we build; a raging force in the calm of chaos
The solidarity of this fortress called earth, the permanence of its chaos
Is challenged by a rusty blade
The blade rises against the mountain, no eyes to see the foolishness of its act
Its precise slashes chipping away at the uneven granite
The blade chips, the dead clock ticks
The mountain sits
© Samir Georges 2009
Time is just a number that is part of fate
Time is a number that too few people value
And it will continue to disentegrate
I will never forget that one day when i was so close yet so far away
The sound of a ring lead me to words that i never wanted to hear
Lies entered my ears and i fought back tears
With my mouth wide open with nothing to say
Time was my enemy, I had never felt so betrayed
And when i returned home, and lies became truth
I was a minute too short and time had ended the heartbeat of one of it's youth
Time is just a number that simply burns away
As days continue to pass, I will carry this burden to my grave
For being a minute too short on that one tragic day
When time ended so quickly as skies turned to grey
Time is just a number that we cannot waste
To Eamon
I followed you down that long straight road
Stretched through plain under sky
You with your boy and your bicycle
Me, with Despair in my stare and my sigh.
And we came to the Dante-esque crossroads
And watched as ghosts in machines drove by.
I had seen, of course, this show before
But not with you by my side
And the loneliness was lessened
With two caught on life’s cold neap tide.
Two sheep in the false wolf’s clothing
Of an alienating pride.
Trekking miles of running blacktop
Not knowing if to or from
Just keeping present with the moments
Of time coming and time gone.
And the twisted things that the intellect
Poured its poisoned moonlight on.
We stopped at a dusty layby
High and bare upon a bluff
And I felt suddenly false and foolish
Caught up in your family stuff.
Like a dog around a carcass
Who cannot eat enough.
Oh blindly I adored you
Your machinelike cold control
As you calmly dissected other lives
In a way that showed no soul.
And I thus refused what God had dropped
In my Buddhist begging bowl.
When we chilled out at the ranchhouse
I simply couldn’t see
That intellectualising
Was not where we needed to be.
That we cut ourselves with the scalpel
That was meant to set us free.
We were miles from that messy pump the heart
That overrules the head
When talk comes dark and throaty
Or gesture rules instead.
And the soft look of submission
Says the things that can’t be said.
O it’s hard to track the wolf man
Who hates being spied upon
And who when he sees it’s over
Thinks it’s easy to move on.
For the present’s lean and hungry
And the road leads from Babylon.
Yes it’s hard to see the wolfman
Ever watchful for the spy
Tho’ sometimes you will catch him
Under the fitful moonlit sky
On a road forever straightened
In his wide and suffering eye.
side glances mock
the youth,
their moments
of relenting-
sinuously fulfilling,
as if the time
was their own,
and not perpetual.
ideas making cycles-
actions and reactions,
captured by neurons,
and called original.
concisely,
unable to grasp
The Laws of Wisdom,
only time can teach-
imperative,
the elder thinks,
as arthritic bones savor the sun,
skin blisters raw, and pains to touch.
Never ending thoughts of endless matters
Just seem to vacate my heavy brain
One keeps coming that what if time shatters
Among ourselves and within our veins
What if I stand and yell GO BACK
Go back for the love of god if you may!
A decade of time is all I lack
To be another one with no mistakes
But no you wont for you never do
Leaving me here to suffer and weep
Why have I and why not?! .. starring at you
With eyes full of blood .. for they never sleep
I wish I did that and I wish I didn’t
But you don’t care oh great TIME you are
You never stop.. I bet you couldn’t!
Just a bigger puppet how miserable you are
That’s just my thought .. the one of many
Crazy or insane I may be perhaps
But just look back and watch how many
Have gone simply mad over such facts
Form:
From the edge of WTC
The world can now see
For the first time in history
I believe in God’s prophecy.
The pursuit of Happiness is my goal
My emotion is something I can’t control
Success is what I’m seeking for at school
But obstacles make me feel so uncool.
No one really takes a moment
To welcome the time of the judgment
No one really knows, hereby
The philosophy we live by.
Despite all, God is watching over us
In this darkness, we have to be cautious.
This worldwide crisis won’t last long,
If faith and hope are quite far along.
Form:
The forgetful fisherman was as wise as he was forgetful.
Some even said that he used to be a Zen Master,
but that was along time ago and he had forgotten about that.
Early one morning a little boy approached the fisherman asking him for advice.
"Sir, my father would like me to help on the boat, but I am fearful of the ocean."
"Every time I get near it, I am desperately afraid. What should I do?"
The fisherman sat contemplating the boy's problem.
Finally he spoke, 'My child, You have to learn to control your FEAR."
"No, that's not it!!!" He said interrupting himself.
There was a long period of silence,
and the boy was unsure if the fisherman had fallen asleep.
Finally, he opened his eyes and spoke, "You have to learn to eliminate your FEAR,"
But quickly corrected himself again by yelling, "STRIKE THAT!!!"
This time there was an even longer silence
and the boy sat and watched
as the sun changed horizons
The boy thought the fisherman had forgotten about his problem
and was about to get up and leave when the fisherman spoke again,
"You have to learn to destroy your FEAR."
But was quick to point out, "Oh, Lord no that's not it!!!"
"Neither do you need to learn to bury it," he added quickly
and then was silent for a long time.
The boy sat with the fisherman until the evening started to creep up on them,
The sun was about to kiss the ocean, giving the sky a tangerine haze.
The boy really needed to go Now!
As he got up the forgetful fisherman told him "STOP!"
"FEAR is a sickness that crawls inside of you and dies," said the fisherman.
"The SICKNESS grows," he continued.
"It penetrates,
infiltrates,
your every being,
doing,
going,
leaving you,
in a constant state of FEAR.
Making you its servant,
You need to learn to release your FEAR."
'Is that it?" the boy asked getting up to leave.
"Release?
I'm...
Not...
Sure...
Let me think about it for a little while," the forgetful fisherman replied.
Three thousand ginger bread cookies
On a purple path to shade
Twisted Time Diagonally
Elusively Disfiguring Reality
Green was Blue
Blue was Happy
Happy was Sneezy
And the other Six dwarves
never showed
They didn't believe in fairy tales
Time jumped out the window
To see if it could fly
And found out literarily
That Time does not fly
It Bends and Twists,
Manipulates
Sometimes it even Backflips
But Time is different for everyone
"We see what we want to see,"
Time whispers in my ear.
"I see a girl in a coconut bra," I say.
"She's not ready to see you yet," says Time.
"But Why?" I ask.
"The answer will not make you any happier."
Time insists.
"No question or answer ever will."
For some reason
I trust Time's transdimensional perspective
"Then can we stay in this moment forever?"
I ask Time.
"We only believe what we want to believe,"
Time says before Nature and Gravity right Themselves
Causing Motion and Misery and Noise
to hurl itself back into my lap
I hear the clock ticking
And cannot believe that
for one moment
Time stopped
By: Joseph DeMarco
Form:
'Consolation Philosophy'
And with it
The prophecy
Your fate
Is your making
In a time
Of autocracy
Boethius the wise
One who answered
All questions
A time when He spoke
But barely took actions
Does God control me
Or merely observe
Am I of myself
Or am I to serve
What making of man
Provide good and evil
Will time yield the answer
Or be it medieval
I can't see the light
But can we see now
The thinker in jail
Did all to show how
A torch that he passed
In thought ever-lit
We must pass it down
To all benefit
Time swiftly passes by,
There are no seconds to spare,
As there is no time left,
Let us make the best of it here.
Time comes and time goes,
Time blows out the window,
It moves to fast, slow down and realize,
Realize it cannot be closed.
Time will never stop,
But as time flows,
We shall stick together,
And together suffer these blows.
Form:
The fiend of time is preying on the substance of my youth,
I’m smoldering away existence to avoid the awful truth
That time is not my friend and the enemy is myself,
And there’s little more to do but accept its mocking stealth.
In a blink of an eye it’s gone, like it was never there before,
All those years I’ve wasted, when I should’ve been doing more.
Planning for the future or treating each day like the last
But living in the fast lane you don’t even see it pass.
Suddenly you realise that time is slipping away,
A terrible fear is rising with every passing day
The life style that we lead is a fast track to demise
And even with this knowledge we will not compromise.
When I look at my reflection I see what is yet to come,
This pleasing image standing here is soon to be undone.
And when ten years have passed and the image comes to life,
What will I be thinking then, having gone through all that strife?
The fiend’s grip is closing in with no time for preparation,
The waiting room of life where we’re chained by anticipation
Of traumas to unfold of which we’re blissfully unaware
The fiend of time ticks on for a world that doesn’t care.
Measuring our time each year,
ever-present background fear.
longing for the end to come,
attaching meaning to the sum.
nearer to us our fate draws,
creeping time to natures laws.
how we search for end of time,
older, older, it's sublime.
lingering in youth of old,
years are passing, time unfolds