Sunday, April 19, 2026

Poetry About Time: The Investigations

The Tick-Tock Tractatus

Speaking About Time: The Poetic Investigations

By Michael P. Garofalo

            

                
        August Offerings, Red Bluff CA, 2010, MPG

 

 

Sections

1. Time: time-space, movement, measurement

2. Past: memories, habits, fixed, specific, tradition

3. Present: now, here-now, day, duration

4. Future: maybe, planned, anticipated, uncertain

5. Passing: change, cycles, aging, growth, death

6. Beginning: renewal, starting, enthusiasm

7. Psychology: learning, experience, knowing

8. Middle: in progress, half-way, steady, living

9. Language: poetry, philosophy, ordinary

10. Silence: inexpressive, nonsense, illogical

11. Mystical: numinous, profound, intense, insightful,

12. Beauty: art, crafts, music, reading/writing

13. Social: ethics, morality, economics, manners, value

14. Philosophy: ethics, history, analysis, arguments, logic

15. History: landmark events, books/printing, memory

16. Eternity: forever, infinite, unimaginable, death

 

Preface

Key to Books Cited

Bundled Up Quintains about Time

Additional Notes


7.   Psychology: experience, learning,
      phenomenology, sense of time, personal

 

7.1
Generalities, Questions, Quips

What you see depends on when you look.
What you hear requires you to listen now.

Time is our 6th Sense.

The Specious Present extends consciousness
to include a pinch of the past,
a pinch of the future,
and the fullness of the now.

Give awareness a 5 second window
for processing perceptions.

Afraid to run out of time.
He had time on his hands, then dropped it.

Your brain works on time schedules.

"The quality of attention determines
the nature of the experience."
Joanne Kyger

BU794, GC§14

The Five Senses

 

7.2
Using vs Knowing

We knew that water was essential,
but did not know it was H2O;
We knew the sun was hot,
but had no concept of nuclear.
It works but we don't know how or why.

BU2930

History of Science

 

7.2.1
Unfolding Time

     Implicate orders of a
Underlying Reality
Unfolding Being... and the
     Explicate orders of
ordinary common things.

BU1149, GC§7

David Bohm

Net of Indra

 

7.3.1
End Game

They ran out of time
The game ended on time
They lost this time.
They all got back to the bus in time.
They will do better next time.

BU2835

 

7.3.1.1
The Game of Death

I'm too old
for any real Destiny
except for Death
creeping up to me, tagging Me:
"Your It!"

BU891, GC§36

 

7.3.1.2
Impermanence of Samsara

Samsara is Nirvana?
10,000 Things are Nothing?
Past and future are gone (Empty?).
The Present is gone in a Flash.
What's left? Samsara won't last.

BU918

 

7.3.1.3
Silent Lips

          The sting of Death,
the sharp pains of unseeing,
the final closing of the eyes,
the silent lips of emptiness...
faces lost forever in future times.

BU1246

 

7.3.2
Better Next Month

That such and such is the case
May piss me off for all the day
Why should it be this damn way?

Next month, such and such will not be the case.
I will be very pleased come that day.

BU3431

Quintain Poetry

Time Explained: Experience, Consciousness and Relativity.
By Alan Bennett, 2026.

Reading Wittgenstein 1975-

 

7.3.2.1
Timely Emotions

Emotions cluster around Immediacy.
Distant futures lack emotional density.
We feel very little about 2222 CE.
Few have any passion for far distant unrealities.
We lust after, say, Hot SEX Today! Fuck the Future!

BU3371

Emotions and Time

 

7.3.3
Take it Slow

Travel light
Even yesterday is a heavy backpack.
Travel slowly
Even tomorrow can wait---
Move on, don't hesitate.

BU2890

Time, Change, Freedom:
An Introduction to Metaphysics

By Nathan Oaklander

 

7.3.4
Differences and Distinctions

Things that look the same
are often really different---
in a web of new respects as to usage
in a web of words wedded meanings
in a different place in space/time.

BU2968

Appearances

 

7.3.5
Time Snuck By

The time sauntered by
invisibly, casually, punctually...
I barely noticed.
so busy with pressing deeds---
time flew by in a gentle breeze.

BU3083

"... time is not a linear flow, as we think it is,
into past, present, and future. Time is an
indivisible whole, a great pool in which all
events are eternally embodied and still have
their meaningful flash of super-normal or
extra-sensory perception, and a glimpse of
something that happened long ago in our
linear time."
Frank WatersMountain Dialogues, 1981

 

7.3.5.1
The Time of Inner Mind

Under the Water
of my mind
an unconscious Sea
of Memories
guide me through time

Keep me on a course line
send me some signs
become conscious at times...
freedom may a fiction be
controlled by unknown destinies.

Bring the Unconscious,
Sub-Conscious, ego, and Id,
Collective Unconscious figured in—
Over the waves of Consciousness
the flotsam of Unknowns are adrift.

BU9

The Gushen Grove Sonnets

The Five Senses

 


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