I feel like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel with this one, but sometimes you just have to go with what you’ve got…

Ribbons travel through confined spaces
unspooling records of time
shouts and projections from someone else’s past
The memories are my own
displaced by years
defined by distance
repeated at will

At random intervals, I remember the faces
I came to know in another time
all the moments I convinced myself would last
long after we’d up and gone
There were never any tears
at the loss of a chance
only more hours to kill

I haven’t been back to those places
it’s enough that I can’t go back in time
change the role in which I was (mis)cast
or learn something I should have known
I can’t waste more fears
on that useless dance
for the sake of a melancholy thrill

So I’m determined—no more futile chases
or attempts to circumvent time
In the wild, it’s an explosion—controlled, it’s a blast
a thrust into another zone
or wherever the wheel steers
A game of chance
surrender to will

(19 June 2016)