"Time is a Yellowing Thing" by Eric Subpar

Time is a white but yellowing thing.

I’ve got an ibuprofen bottle packed with psilocybin

And a mind packed to the brim with thoughts I can’t quite dodge.

So we drove down to Oregon upon a winter lark

And swam within the green green ocean of ponderosas

That all bent their heads so rigidly toward God

We thought our bodies had dropped out from beneath us.

We ascended

And You turned to me and said how sad it was

That nothing gold can stay and everything just gets gutted

On the way to the slaughterhouse.

But I kissed your cheek and built a mustache

From the low hanging moss while The Look of Love

Played on a distant radio.

Time is a yellowing thing, this is true.

You are borne of shadows

And you die in the light.

The air you breathe stretches on forever until it stops.

The air your steed from birth to whatever comes after.

My brittle and broken steed.

My skeleton-shaped catacomb

My stilted heart high above the hollows.

Faking pain inside an aching brain

Of some absent father’s design

Fractured and flawed, line by line.

All whimsy and strained

Unreasoned and even-keeled.

Like Carol Channing’s voice through crackling waveforms.

Age ain’t nothing but a number, they say.

But time is a yellowing thing.

Eric Subpar is a poet from Washington State where he lives with his wife and three sons. Find him at @EricSubpar on Twitter.