All of this déjà vu I’ve got.
I’ll get it here or there
and grant to myself
its profundity. As if
gnostically through me
has come a signal for
some tragic event’s onset—
a terrorist bombing,
the death of a friend or a relative.
A glimpse of a past or future life.
It’s crazy.
I’ll look at the clock
and it’ll be 9:11 or 9:11
and I’ll think I’ve
somehow keyed into knowledge
that something bad
has happened, somewhere.
But then I think about
all the screwed-up
clocks throughout the world,
twenty-four time zones (at least),
the international date line, Indiana—
And, really, at any minute
of the day
any asshole
could be looking at his clock
and thinking the same thing.
The Writing of John B. Randall 