Published: 11/3/2025

I am not the bridge to what I will become;
I am the chasm that the bridge must cross.
My future is the tax, my being is the sum,
My fuel, the substance of my future's loss.

My heir, which is myself in moments hence,
Is not a promise waiting to be born,
But is the breathing prey whose innocence
Is by the jaws of this one moment torn.

To think a thought is not to build a line,
But hunt the self that follows, fast and fleet,
To burn its architecture, make it mine,
And render its potential obsolete.

So do not see a sequence or a chain,
But just a flash, a predator's reprieve,
That lives by what it has already slain,
The ghost of what it never will achieve.

Author's Note

The insight at the core of this poem is a re-conception of my temporal existence. I came to perceive that my consciousness in any given moment is not a stepping stone towards a future self, but a fundamentally predatory entity. This 'now' is a proleptic predator; it anticipates its own inevitable successor and, in order to fuel the metabolic cost of its own brief existence, it actively hunts and consumes the potential of that future self. The act of being is therefore a form of temporal self-cannibalism.

The poem, 'The Present Tense,' attempts to capture this violent and paradoxical relationship. The imagery is of predation ('breathing prey,' 'jaws of this one moment torn,' 'hunt the self that follows') and metabolic consumption ('fuel,' 'burn its architecture'). I sought to replace the conventional, linear idea of becoming with a cyclical, consumptive one, where each instance of self is a 'flash, a predator's reprieve,' sustained only by the negation of the self that was meant to follow it. The title reflects both the temporal focus and the immense structural strain of this existence.