poem
WRITTEN:
1986, 19 years
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
This was written in the first month following my split from Frank (the Irish bus driver I lived with in 1985). I spent most of 1986 writing a lot of angst-ridden rubbish. I was desperately trying to be existentialist and cool, and in those days, cool seemed to mean being incomprehensible - I would read stuff in the paper and in review mags that everyone was saying was brill, and I couldn't understand a word of it! Thus I surmised that the less sense it made (and in fact, the more stupid and banal it sounded), the cooler it would be. So this isn't really about anything, it's just me trying to be cool, tho I guess it's at least superficially about clock-watching...
I hear the clock
Like an army approaching
Each second death is closer
Each step is more life lost
The fluorescent numbers smug
Like the knowing grin of a general
So close to victory
His veins filled not with blood but power
His heart pumping only greed
His eyes seeing only glory
The fluorescent hands
Creeping slowy round the dial
Like a secret weapon
Their true purpose masked
By outwardly innocent movement
The simplicity of moving in a circle
Hides the killer instinct
Moving in a circle
My own useless movement
Round and round my allotted time-space
So like a tiger in a cage
And when the clock decrees, then may I move elsewhere
But for now I am limited
Constricted
Disciplined
Confined
Held
I