Who needs...?

Remote controls, I've 5 or 6. I’m not sure; I’ve lost count.

Sky, TV, M Box, Soundboard, that’s just four. The right amount?

There’s one for everything these days, of that I have no doubt.

There’s one to close the curtains so you can’t look in the house,

There’s one for washing dishes without getting off the couch,

And one to measure calories when you are working out,

Another sets the tablecloth when mates are coming round,

A tiny one for purine levels when you’re facing gout.

I find one down the sofa back and push the red button

And down the street a car explodes. Oh Christ, what have I done?

I panic, fret and wail and cry, but then the answer comes:

I hit ‘rewind’ and back it zooms as if it’s never gone.

Now that gives me an idea. Now I can have some fun.

Fast forward through the boring bits of life’s dreary friction:

Press pause and get an afternoon outside in summer sun.

And turn the neighbours down when they start ranting at someone.

This handy little gadget’s got a multitude of uses

And in my hands it’s joy on joy; it constantly amuses.

I oscillate twixt then and now on my temporal cruises.

Master of time, I drink my wine and give out red brain bruises

For cultural insanity is bound by these abuses;

To flicker forth an hour or two eventually confuses.

What is my time? What, when and why? Whither the muses?

Creation’s going backwards! The remote’s blown its fuses!

Oh me, oh day, oh what am I to do? Unstuck in time

Like Billy Pilgrim, all my dreams are starting to unwind.

Tomorrow’s gone and yesterday is coming close behind;

Today’s a concept lost to me in psychographic grime,

There’s no such idea anymore of walking in a line,

When waiting's done and what may be’s a tangled ball of twine

With no strands loose to pull and straight. Ridiculous, sublime

Inheritance of Dali's clock. Persistence? Melted mind.

But time is not a country, nor is it righteous, yet

We live by day and sleep by night and work to get in debt

To buy a house to fill with stuff with functions and gadgets

That each need a remote control to keep them on and set.

The red lights wink, the infra-red waves circulate and get

More and more mysterious and leak out through the net

From every mortgaged bungalow to every short-term let

We pile up plastic numbered wands. A modern magic set.

But this is all irrelevant. I’m paused, b-between breaths.

A spectre of a ghost, I am the notes between the frets.

The buttons just won’t work for me. I’m halfway up the steps

And halfway down again. Oh man, I’ve lost what’s coming next,

I’ve lost the frisson of not knowing what’s there to expect,

Anticipation’s dead for me. I can’t go forward, back, bereft

And glued. I’m stuck in amber. I call, but there’s no depth,

No soundwaves travel in still air: not life, but not a death.

I press the buttons one more time. No response. Hopelessly

I curse myself for thinking I could ever make it free,

That I could be so stupid to pause time and life for me

To play in at my leisure. Ah, to be, and not to be -

That is the question that pervades me now. Eternity

In a grain of sand? In a madman’s hand? Uselessly

My garbled mind takes leave. But then – a brainwave – just maybe

All that I need to do is find a pair of batteries.