Been reading a lot of poetry, especially Spanglish translations. The net result of this is that had my normal mental reflux and it sounds horribly familiar; but no idea where from. Dagnammit brain:

The day time stopped

People danced in the street

Celebrating its passing

Stopping all the clocks

With trembling fingers

And righteous hammers
Day still came and went

Darkness continued to Circumnavigate the globe
People made love

At sunrise

At sunset

When the sun was at its highest

When the moon was at its brightest

Whenever the urge seized them

Which was sometimes little

And sometimes often

And always as it pleased them
Life was measured in footsteps, breaths, blinks-of-an-eye, in cups of coffee, tv watched, books read, cigarettes inhaled, cryptic crosswords solved, selfies, Sundays and blue cheese

In experience

And lines around the eyes
Death and birth remained a constant

And whether people celebrated

Or

When they grieved

They took precisely the measure of heartbeats demanded to bring their selves back to equilibrium

No more

No less
Capitalism didn’t die

Unfortunately

Despite the fears of its Lords and Masters

People just went to work when it was needful

And left when the work was done

There was no clocking off

No overtime

No sneaking off early to go to the gym
People still joined gyms

And were still too busy to go

And still forgot to cancel their memberships
If you rang the talking clock

All you heard was singing
And, yes, the computers stopped

Confused by the lack of

Hours,

Minutes,

Seconds,

But only for a while

Mighty brains collaborated with

Artificial Intelligences

Creating micro moments

Outside human cognition

Facebook was lost

No one actually mourned

Even people who worked at Facebook
Trains were no longer late

They just turned up

Train companies breathed a sign of relief

As did the commuters

Since the demise of time they were no longer late so no longer anxious or angry or upset or defensive or tired or burnt-out or missing their childrens’ bedtimes
Therapists found the work begin to dry up

And told their Therapist about their decreasing client list

Becoming one of the few self-sustaining industries
Time pieces became antiquities

Collectable and coveted

Handed down by generations

Their use and purpose whispered in dusty stories

Of a time when people lived and died by the aching movement of tiny hands or the stealthy steal of digital numbers

Of industrial revolutions

Of the revolutions of the earth
All this

And more
Life happened

In it’s own time