T.G.I.F. 12/6ish/19

[Quixilated]

Hello! Welcome to T.G.I.F. ThurFriterday

What this is:  A new prompt will be posted every ThurFriterday.  Everyone is welcome to participate in this thread at any time, and in any time zone, no restrictions apply.  Don't overthink the prompts, just let loose and have a bit of fun.  If it’s not ThurFriterday where you are, no worries!  You can post a poem in any of the prompt threads on any day of the week.  You can even go back and post in the first thread if you missed it.  

To any residents of Kiritimati, for whom this post was two and a half hours “late,” as well as any residents in Hawaii, for whom this post was 22ish hours “early,” please be advised that these prompts will be posted anywhere between Kiritimati’s Friday Morning to Hawaii’s Saturday night. ThurFriterday exists in a parallel time zone where time is arbitrary and days of the week are a wibbly wobbly destination at best.  

How it Works:   
1. Write a poem on the suggested topic using the form described.  (However, the prompt is more like guidelines, not a hard and fast rule.)
2. Each poem should appear as a separate reply to this thread.
3. The goal is to have FUN!!!   Comments, kudos, and questions are welcome responses.

ThurFriterday, December 5-7ish, 2019

Topic: Time Travel. 

What if you could go back in time? What would you change?  Who would you meet?  What if you could go forward in time? What do you hope or fear to see?  What if time travelers from the future visited you?  What would their message be?  What if you invented the very first time machine?  What would your first destination be?  Would you keep it a secret?  Would you visit your own timeline?  Would you fact check history?  Would you warn your own timeline about impending disasters?  The possibilities are endless!  

Form: any

Line Requirement:  any

[dukealien]

Wave


What we fail to realize
and only in psychiatry suspect
is that our perceptions are
sole selector of which end
of time’s relentless arrow
wears its feathers.

Take, for example, that immense
organism we call “DNA”
which, as it happens, lives toward
its first Assembly
not what we perceive as future.

What we misinterpret as division
is reunion and all changes
which we call mutations
are in fact rejections of disorder
honing and refining its gestalt
until that first perfected molecule
rejoins from its scattered
and imperfect progeny
following one unfolding route
inerrantly contained within
what we call chromosomal “junk.”

See (though we can’t), both we
and it are time machines
though traveling in opposite
directions. Don’t forget
to wave in passing!

[billy]

Hello Billy (me)

"fuck off you dirty old bastard
stood there watching me swim in the cut,
why are you smiling?"

"Keep swimming Billy"
keep swimming in everything you do,
upstream, downstream; it doesn't matter
where you swim, enjoy the doing of it.
jump in, splash like a mer-child,
scream like a wet banshee.
live the thrill of the dive and the depth-charge,
enjoin those you love to swim by your side
charge through the water, plough it
like a submariner leaving white water wakes.
don't worry about the wet shorts and vest,
the violence, the pain.
wash it off in the shallows, if they persist
dive, dive as deep as you can and cleanse,
be strong, be silent, be hard.
let the water be your tears, bathe in them.
soon you'll know compassion as confetti
and forgiveness as the brightest of rainbows.
the pain will be fleeting, embrace it like you would
a puppy that needs holding.
you cannot be broken, not if you swim
not if you swim.

i love you.


[the cut, is the canal]

[Tiger the Lion]

McFly on Risk Management 

Statistically,
you are more likely
to be mauled by a hamster
than die in a time-travel accident.

Even so,

you should crunch all the numbers
and Wiki the facts,

watch hours of Youtube
and Google the maps,

so when it comes time
to make a decision 
on where in the fabric
to make the incision

you can shake off the shaking
and know that you're making
the cut with some sort of precision.

[Quixilated]

I dreamt that Yesterday was a phantom child,
who lurked in the shadows of a darkling wood 
whispering sweet stories now barely remembered.
He winds through misty memory’s tangled trails
searching a tether to bind him to earth.

I dreamt of Tomorrow, a blinding light,
where siren songs echo through far off halls.
There were infinite doors, every one locked,
labeled with vague words like “hope” and “turn back.”
With fingers in ears and eyes closed tight, I turned away.

I dreamt time was leaking through a crack in the wall,
golden tendrils wafted and curled like smoke,
like shapes in the clouds on a windy day.
Something had pulled at the seams
now we travel through time in our dreams.