Disappointman #5

Our hero has met a villain this season,

One that would cause him to slip.

And as he fell, he discovered the reason,

He'd worn the wrong shoes for the trip.

Imagine the scene if you will, a depiction,

One that was indeed tense.

For he lost his balance, and called out to Friction,

But met with his ally's absence.

Disappointman Episode #4

A missed opportunity has caused our hero to write a lament,

An ode to his perpetual disappointment.

For he acquired something rare, this being a date,

But alas he squandered it,

by being very late.

To say it was his fault would not be true,

The thing is,

His sense of time is rather askew.

And so he proceeded to explain in melodic lines,

His peculiar relationship with time:

‘I bask in the present, deluded that it will last,

But the clock ticks still, while I am stuck in the past.

And as I reside there, in relaxed stupor,

It seizes me suddenly,

that beast,

the future.

Underestimate minutes that elapse during my actions.

Eating pieces of time, and chewing its fractions.

And all the while, you lay in wait,

And I am sorry

But I was already ten minutes late.

I know you don’t think I care,

But I was being-towards-the-future,

Deciding what to wear.

And on the bus, I said I’d be there in ten,

But you’d been waiting forty minutes,

And decided to leave then.

Alas I missed you, due to my imbalance,

But I can’t help it, I’m severely time-challenged.

Perhaps I can never atone, but one certainly tries,

So all I can do,

Is melodically apologize.’

And while he was finding chords for this apology,

He saw that it was already half past three.

And elsewhere she stood, at three fifty five,

Still waiting for him to arrive.

So here lies a time-based tragedy,

About a someone who was allergic to punctuality.

The reasons for his ailment, he does not know,

But it might have something to do with his watch,

Being rather slow.

Disappointman episode #3

"Excuse me sir, does one know how to get to this particular road?"
Oh yes I believe so, I shall direct you through anecdote.
Yours is a journey I've taken before,
Take the first left...or was it the third or the fourth?
Then you will across a tree of birch...or was it bay...
"These directions do seem rather vague...'
My apologies madam, it's me I ask you to forgive,
For I am recalling directions from a different narrative.
I'm afraid that with regards to your route, I haven't a clue.
"Oh, I'm in a rush, so for nothing, thank you."

On Porridge

Count from sixty down to one, ask yourself whether that will be enough. Within the whirring of passing time, several scenarios play out in hypothetical space. Pockets of possibility are created, existing simultaneously until a prolonged beep eradicates all but one. And upon opening the door, one is on the threshold of being either content, or regretful. Go back to the start, when bleary eyed, you poured your hopes for the day into a bowl.

There was uncertainty as to how much to invest, for too little would not be enough to sustain, and too much would weigh one down - a burden of disappointment to carry around for a couple of hours at least. You proceeded to go on to the next stage, opening the gate to your heart. For a second, your hopes and dreams floated in a sea of what was yet to be. Doubt continued to present itself, what was needed was a catalyst, something to imbue a sense of reality, and the possibility for this opened with that of the door, and the placing of the bowl within.
And so we return to the present, aware now of what we have invested, yet this awareness is tinged with uncertainty. One counts from sixty to uncertainty, wondering whether the sea of potentiality is too vast. This is a problem, for if one eats from an unbalanced ratio of contents in the bowl, one ends up consuming a diluted sense of fulfillment.

On the other hand, if one’s hopes and dreams lay in a pond, or even still, a puddle of what is yet to be, then there is a danger of starting the day with what can be called a delusion of grandeur. If the balance of the ratio swings the other way, your hopes and dreams will be in want of development, and thus remain in a primitive state that is too savage for reality and thus never be fully realised.
And as you count down from ten, a scenario exists, parallel to this one, in which you sit at the table, slowly chewing on a sense of failure (due to unrealistic hopes) , thinking that you should have added milk instead.
Three, two, one. The door opens, as you reach in, you burn yourself with over-zealousness, for no matter how enthusiastic one is to begin the day, it may be too much, and surges with too much hope and apprehension for one to take in just yet. You must leave at least one minute to settle to prepare for what lies ahead.
This period may seem a liminal one, waiting in a sixty second void, but take up the spoon of assertion, and as you stir, you may gain some semblance of the future. Here you are, take the bowl, the mellow warmth - today. Present it with the cool breeze of excitement, of one that no longer cares to wait.

The first spoonful invokes the banality of the everyday. This is adequate for many, and for some, it is even perfection. But perhaps one does not wish to start the day with a mouthful of stark reality, and wishes rather, to ease into it. There stands before you an array, perhaps you are tempted by the enveloping of an amber mass, torpid and delicious, recalling memories of beautifully scented meadows. Combined with your dreams, its sweetness and evoking distracts from the reality of underachievement, felt at such early hours.
Alternatively, one may opt for a hail of ‘sensible’ masking - several grains of sweetness that can be said to have a slightly better grip on reality. In choosing one or the other, one is choosing to be either romantic, or realistic. Of course, there is a possibility for one to throw caution to the wind and opt for a generous tablespoon of blackberry jam.

As you embark on an everyday adventure, you think back over the two strands of time that facilitated the act of making porridge. Everything is brushed to the past, but you got what you needed. However, there is often a slight miscalculation in the marking of time strands in relation to this morning act. Past and present is noted, but many forget the future. This third strand is forgotten for various reasons, perhaps one never thinks of it, or one is in too much of a rush to think of it in that particular moment.
The danger is that, if one fails to consider the future when it still exists as a future, then they will surely bear the repercussions when the future becomes a regretful past. And so this latter makes itself known to the person, who upon arriving back home after their day of events, finds an empty bowl left on the table. However, This bowl is not completely empty but contains the remnants of the morning’s hopes and dreams, and these hopes and dreams are not as they were - full of warmth and appetizing anticipation for potentiality, but are now hard, irremovable fossils of lost hope.

There they remain in the bowl, as if Medusa herself had cast her glare upon them. There seems to be only one course of action to take, and so one must fill the bowl with regret, ironically from the same source as the potentiality of the morning. Lost hopes and dreams must now remain in this pool of regret until there is an acceptance of what was never achieved, never realised.
This must be done, for one is doing it with a consideration of the future, the morrow, when the process is to be repeated, when a new batch of hopes and dreams are poured in and uncertainty hangs over you as you count from sixty down to one.