Tempocide

--by Ben Downing

I tried to kill time but it would not die.
No sooner had I whacked its weeds than they
sprang tauntingly back up, revivified
by some artesian strength inside the day.
Its past I stabbed, then laced with cyanide
the golden sundials for its greedy rays—
fiascoes both. My attempt, while driving by,
to catch the minutes in a fusillade
of disregard; my fiendish plot to elide
unwanted hours just dawdling them away;
the clock-shaped voodoo doll; the evil eye
against my watch; calendars auto-da-féed:
all these and others went risibly awry,
so botched and feeble were my ambuscades.
The more I hacked, in fact, the more time’s hy-
dra heads came unwinding out to prey,
their long antagonisms multiplied
and whetted by such treacherous essays.
From tick to tock now seemed an ocean wide;
a googolplex of nanoseconds weighed
upon me crushingly. Helpless then to pry
loose time’s awful bulk or to delay
its reckoning, nabbed without an alibi,
a sorry-ass sicarius tout à fait,
I wished I’d let time be and wondered why
we try to kill what passes anyway.