Why Are All The Clocks Broken?

Photo by Engin Akyurt from Pexels

The time is dissolving slowly, melting like sugar in lukewarm water,

But the river flowing out of you is spoiled,

It’s saltier than the tears of your father.

The seconds dribble and form symmetrical frost flowers in the meadows –

A handful of daffodils with conspicuous crowns

And a single French rose.

You don’t acknowledge, you’re busy playing with the minutes falling,

They’re drenching you like rain in a hot summer,

You kneel to them as if they’re your calling.

The thirsty always forget to bring more drinking water to the deserts,

They rely on the streams appearing hourly as mirages,

They sweat and bleed through their T-shirts.

So it’s never said out loud that the art of time is rotten to the very core –

The clocks are rigged for the lucky ones,

They run twice as fast for the poor.

With faux unawareness we live on stolen time, on borrowed yesterdays

Which we pile up so overly confident

Until broken clocks set them ablaze.

The time is materializing fast, burning hotter than the Molotov cocktails.

But the fumes coming out of you are gelid,

Colder than a breeze in an icebreaker’s sails.

-JW

Clockwise

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

Living on the edge of an astronomical clock turning backwards.

The time isn’t real, nor is the space – we’re simply bad actors.

Leaping through the worst past and present can offer, spinning

Back into my oblivion patched with torn memories, singing,

Re-enacting old scenes while the hour hand’s draining me to the bone.

Might feel obscene to these petty people living in their heads

All alone.

But I go up the minute hand, I chase the escape wheel and fall –

Hanging in the flow of the time by a blue thread, dirty and small.

Jumping after each palm reached out to me but I’m somehow missing.

My spine is rubbing into another manipulated reason to stop hissing

And get back to giving all my warm blankets to those who bow

So low to see the last inch of hope leaving the body I liked years back

But now barely know.

I cling to the second hand, almost being ripped in two by the heat.

The change of algorithm is washing my brain of sins and of greed.

Running up the hill of no escape, right up to the promised rope –

You might think I’ll make a noose but by know you must know

I’m not a trope

And I’d rather tie the ends together to keep my own brain intact

Than give you another graveyard fairy-tale of a ghoul eating the hero of my favorite tale

In the second act.

-JW

Barely

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

The glitz and the glamour are ruining our youth –

Too much lipstick, too short of a skirt,

The heels are too high, the words are too brute.

You can’t be book smart if you’re also a flirt.

The anarchism is teasing their brain.

No politics for teens! Stay in your lane.

Shut it, what do you know about pain?

Let’s all follow The Dream and stay insane.

The information is spreading too fast –

When I was twenty, I had a blast.

Now they’re opposing. Who even asked?!

When opinions are given, theirs should go last.

(The reality is changing them too early.

Time is running out, most of them aren’t treated fairly.

But you would rather look away than answer sincerely?

When you claim the youth is pampered, I would say – barely.)

-JW