I Am Time

Time, whatever it might be, has a very concrete, very real, everyday presence in myself. I am time, the aging process of life. I am the second in, second out of my tickling pumping heart, that model for all clocks and watches, for every machine that imitates in drips and clicks and blinks the tic-tacking obsession of existence, that muscle of mine that tells me incessantly that I am time and time is not for ever.


Like the rivers the poet likens to life my veins are running floods of time, they rush blindly for that ocean of the end, the infinite cesspool of nothingness, the timeless darkness of oblivion.


The lungs, time instruments also, breathe within my chest the same timed rhythm of the incessant clock.


Step by step, I walk in time, I time the time of life, that road of the well known allegory. I am, we are, in perpetual movement—we are time; time in us persists and lasts forever and ever as long as a living organism squirms and palpitates in rhythm, second in, second out, timing the never ending passing of life.

Crabs/Cangrejos

Crabs eat the rotten leftovers of life. They clean the world—they get rid of the garbage of death. Like sharks and vultures, they serve as the morticians of nature, the self-appointed consumers of detritus, devoted transformers of dead matter into life again. They form a brotherhood of humble servants in charge of finalities. Sarcophagi they are: the eaters of corruption.

The crab, what a monster of swiftness and stealth. Meek in extreme, it does not kill, but prays, claws raised to the skies, for death to reap its deadly diet of lifeless flesh. Crabs crawl all around us, hidden from our senses, sensing the smell of death, marching for the putrid call, the gangrenous limb, the tumid organ. They feed on life that has been dealt the final blow and they teem at the bottom of decay with bacteria of resurrection.

From the deepest depth the crabs appear, eyes popped out, cracking their claws, clicking their nails, mouthing the chew—tearing and eating is their duty.


Comen los cangrejos las sobras putrefactas de la vida. Limpian el mundo: disponen de la basura de la muerte. Como los tiburones y los buitres hacen las veces de sepultureros de la naturaleza, consumidores del detritus, dedicados transformadores de la materia muerta en viva de nuevo. Forman una cofradía de humildes sirvientes a cargo de los ritos finales. Sarcófagos son: comedores de lo corrupto.

El cangrejo, qué monstruo de rapidez y sigilo. Temeroso en extremo, no mata; ruega, en cambio, las tenazas alzadas al cielo, por la muerte para cosechar su mortal dieta de carne inerte. Los cangrejos pululan a nuestro alrededor, a escondidas de nuestros sentidos, olfateando la muerte, marchando a la llamada de lo podrido, al miembro gangrenado, al órgano tumefacto. Se alimentan de la vida que ha sufrido el último golpe y se amontonan al fondo de la descomposición con las bacterias de la resurrección.

De lo más profundo los cangrejos aparecen, los ojos saltones, castañeteando las tenazas, resonando las uñas, saboreando el bocado: destrozar y comer son su deber.