Pendulum
Even when it’s quiet I can hear
the tock of a non-existent clock
that prods me from rest with
a bony-fingered ‘get up,
there’s work to be done’.
It’s king clock, a regal tock
beating future’s ruthless march:
the sneering crump of boot on road –
by the left, tick tock!
A chronographic catalogue of every
wasted minute squats in the unreachable past,
a spiteful judge, chiming time’s punishment:
Too late, too late –
heed me, you need me.
But I don’t – I scream: A horological
heresy drowns the counting,
stills the pendulum until there’s nothing but this moment
for now.
