oct 15th 2022 - a day at the races 07 - Timeless Shrug

[skonen_blades]

There's an event called A Day at the Races where poets go to the horse races and they each pick a horse name at random from each of the seven races and then use that name as a prompt for a poem. At the end of the day, we read out the 'winning' poem from each race and then whatever other poems we think turned out pretty good. It's a fun day.

This is poem 07 from race 07 and my horse's name was Timeless Shrug.

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Timeless Shrug

Every adolescent
From the beginning of time
From before recorded history
And far into the future
(Until humans are changed into something else
or removed entirely)

Every one of them
Has a timeless shrug

A twitch of indifference

They join every other teen
In an eternal
Timeless shrug continuum

I envy the timeless shrug
The up and down of shoulder bones
That Atlas shrug of clavicles
A dismissal beyond the fifth dimension

As the shoulder hangs at the apex of its motion
Time pauses and stops
Accordioning across millenia
As every young shrugger
Joins in unison and power
An engine of not knowing and not caring
Piston shoulders rising and falling

With the same motion

That angels use to flap their wings




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