Fate of the Time Meddlers

We have tampered
with time far too much
and now our hours and days,
our minutes and seconds,

the temporal length
of a fleeting thought,
can change at random
like the wandering stations

of a holographic scanner
in a rift between galaxies.
We have tampered
with time far too much,

so that the time-honored
constraints of our universe
become relentless variables,
our generational histories

raveling thread by thread
until the terrain of our
everyday world dissolves
in an onslaught of chaos.

We have tampered
with time far too much,
and now we track a life
of transient tomorrows,
stealing away times
we should have lived
and delivering others,
each stray night rife

with unknown stars
in a treacherous sky,
each morning born
with a full set of teeth.

Appeared in Asimov's SF