Polar Chronologies

Down Flashing
 
the dead weight of history,
the decaying stash of centuries past
over ripening on every side,
I descend in a conceptualized
temporal bathysphere, transparent,
to shield myself from decomposition
and keep the rust storms from my eyes.
 
Only shambling homunculi,
the flesh fleeing from their bones,
inhabit this once upon a time,
ghostly dirt-limned apparitions
who rehearse their passage endlessly
with no passion of a human kind.
 
Each instant has its apogee,
a present we infest with strife,
full with color, rife with sound,
before the while of consciousness dies,
before electrons in their orbits fail
and valences begin to lie.
 
Each fallen second tumbles by
coexistent with the here the now,
a tableau on a sunken stage
as timeworn and as timeless
and as hushed as winter skies,
drowned shadows we invest with life,
these fabled constructs of our minds. 
 
Up Flashing
 
through realms of airy possibility,
the ether thinning round my craft
and then the craft itself,
until I'm only a needle wide projection
quivering back and forth across
the bell-shaped curve of future lines
where fractals propagate and splay,
 
where all that could be lies,
where visions I will soon forget
arrest my thoughts with consequence
and orchestrated holocausts transpire,
past public gardens ripe with fruit
and inescapable dystopias of need,
 
all this and more the log replays,
and though I know the voice is mine,
my memories have shunned descent,
I cannot hold tomorrow in my head;
with random cause and stray effect
the future comes and comes again
 
in microcosms and in worlds on high,
it's graven soon as soon can be,
hardwired in our histories,
and still I scan unwritten texts,
anticipate the flight to next,
and scope the growth within the seed
to feed my time-bound curiosities.

Appeared in Asimov's SF Magazine