Time by James Goh

Time is the butterfly,
It flutters from our grasp with each fleeting second.
It is the heel of rich men,
The Eden for poor,
It waits not for the end of happiness,
Or the beginning of sorrow.
Time is the impartial judge,
He does not need evidence to prove anyone’s existence,
judges not with a hammer,
And gives but one sentence.
Time is the unseen killer,
Who waits, crouched in the darkness,
And strikes when heads are turned the other way,
His weapon is not a dagger which plunges deep into your heart,
But a slow poison which anchors your soul to the ground,
And drags it away from you with each passing step.
In the end, as one sits in a lonely corner writhing,
Struggling to break free of the chains which bind,
No one watches as your life flutters by but the murderer,
Who grants you no time before he brings down his dagger into my side,
As I sit, laying and bleeding, the only thought that goes through my head,
Repeatedly, silently, slips out from under my consciousness before my vision blurs and my physicality fails to exist, the last breath of my mind screams,
It is time.

No one watches as your life flutters by but the murderer,
Who grants you no time before he brings down his dagger into my side,

Your tense change here (from "your" second person, to "my" first person) makes this and the following kind of confusing. Is this poem about you, or about us? (up until then I thought it was in 3rd person)

Repeatedly, silently, slips out from under my consciousness before my vision blurs and my physicality fails to exist,

You should probably break this line up, it's much too long.

The only thing I would suggest is that rather than say, "Time is *blank*" just personify time. Telling us what time is almost ruins the metaphor that time is something other than time.

I agree with Suzie. It's boring to read poems that go along the lines of "_____ is like _____", i.e. the classic "Life is like a box of chocolates" or "Friendship is like a warm fuzzy sweater". Eeew.

It's a poor premise for a poem; you set out the metaphor in the first line and proceed to compare the two objects for x number of lines. "Time is this" "Time is that". You can do more with it.

If you want to draw a parallel between time and *place object here*, the best way to do it is to present the two things in the same poem without ever having the word "like" in between them. You can do lots of things to show that the two are similar, or different.

In this famous example, Howard Nemerov creates a metaphor for the difference between prose and poetry.

Howard Nemerov wrote:Because You Asked about the Line between Prose and Poetry

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned into pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn't tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

See how he compares the "line" between prose and poetry to the moment in time that the rain turns to snow? He doesn't ever come out and say, "This is like this because of this." But we know what he's talking about because of his title and word choice. Get what I'm saying?

Good luck!
-Colleen