The Message

The waves in my ears

Like the ocean

Crash upon me with a force so extreme

That they move the earth.

Click click click clack click

The keys are clicking

The words are sticking

Poetry moves from my brain to my fingertips.

From the page to your eyes

My body is the medium

The messages comes not from me.

Tick tick tick tack tick

Time is always wasting away

Slipping through my anxious grasp

Not enough tick tick ticks in the day

To make time last.

Always elusive, always evading,

For more time I barter youth

It seems that time, always persuading

Convinces me, like a drug

That I want more more more.

Drip drip drip drop drip

The water drops speak to me

In all their precious irony

For some they bring life

For me, a wicked symbol of prosperity.

My water drip drip drips

From a shiny metal faucet

In a shiny metal sink

Where I scrub, scrub scrub away

The noxious remnants of another day.

The water stinks stinks stinks

Of privilege.

And of waste.

Tap tap tap tap

Is the sound that glasses make

When clinked together over celebration

Something small, or something great.

Tap tap tap tap

Your bottles on the pine Sir

Surely that must get the attention of the barmaid.

Hissssssssss

Their voices smother me in their coils

Demands as crude as oil

And just as black

They cover my body

Which instinctively recoils

From the whip that is harassment

And the violent stinging of that crack

Their stinking compliments ring

Through the air, the same way

The smell of trash always lingers

In your nose on a hot day.

“Give me one more” they hiss as they squeeze

Or sometimes hissing even closer,

“Quid Pro Quo”

It’s the ones I trust that make me freeze

It’s the ones that are closest whose hisses I must avoid

While employing a fake smile;

I have to stay employed.

Tick tick tick tack tick

The day, it keeps moving

At a sprint, I sometimes feel.

Too many ticks swell through my ears

And crash onto my thoughts

While I dream about my dears

I listen dutifully to the clock.

Tick tick ticking away my one and only life

While I miss the sweet sound of her laughter

I stay engaged, but in strife

Thud thud shuffle thud

I keep stepping forward

Or backward, I can’t tell

Anyway, I keep stepping

Toward a paycheck, toward the hell

That is objectification behind a beer

That is time lost over a year

That is missing youthful cheer

That is apart from those I long

To be near

In the hopes of carrying all the weight

And making a better life

For the souls that I hold dear.

Click click click clack click

The keys are clicking

The words are sticking

Poetry moves from my brain to my fingertips.

From the page to your eyes

My body is the medium

The messages comes not from me.