dictators ticking everywhere:
hanging on bedside tables
poised, controlled débonnaires
ensuring the flow of time is stable
but I’m unstable; numbers’
silhouettes blurring into ink;
dissolving while I quietly slumber
all semblance of sense down an overgrown sink
foetus skin cells dying before they’ve grown:
dandruff plummets from my head.
but fingernails on my curled toes
extend endlessly. they’re DEAD.
I don’t strain against the regime
of standardised, globalised time
rather, I skate through its fever dream:
minutes are not Arabic but made of slime
the hands of the clocks stretch to catch me;
but they only grasp air and smoke
after all, catching a mind untethered to reality
sounds like the punchline of a bad joke
making attempts to follow the pendulum
concentrating on newton’s cradle
straining to hear a cuckoo’s gentle hum
oh sorry, I forgot to write the fourth line
I promise my craft is not so sloppy;
I haven’t forgotten the structure or rhymes
just temporally incoherent, atrophied