The downward momentum is clear to me now.
The engine has built up a full head of steam.
I’d try to stop it, if I knew how.

The fires of industry must burn on somehow;
they tend to burn brightest when fuel is extreme.
The downward momentum is clear to me now.

When currents are surging, we shouldn’t allow
the jingoist fringe to swim in the mainstream.
I’d try to stop them, if I knew how.

Civility means more than I can avow,
but poems can only allude to a theme:
The downward momentum is clear to me now.

Each click of a mouse that shouts holier than thou
is a cog in a treacherous clockmaker’s scheme.
I’d try to stop him, if I knew how.

We worshipped the circuit and forsook the plow
in search of a false technological dream.
Our downward momentum is clear to me now.
I’d try to stop us, if I knew how.

I am a clockmaker
not so keen on letting people
keep track of how I keep time.
I just do.
Effortlessly.
Without
Skipping
A
Beat.

Honey meets tongue,
Leaves taste buds stung and mouth melting
violently versing vows, Spilling out
fermented
Thoughts caught aloud
Dribbling down toward where they ought not
Time stopped us In a clockmaker shop
Cooking empty pots of dead doves in forgot sauce
Some day in december's When
Plans were dismembered
For the scent of Butter bubbling curiosity
Found horse hungry, So, suddenly he broke free
Trampling Predictable  logic.
chasing her tail to town
When, I, sir pain, thought id taught again, then again
the art of invading castles,
Without being found.
Trolling, rolling through The inner out of bounds
A shoeless, shoreless yet Very sure way To get around
None catching on of course Till swordsman number four
Split with silver This world on wheels we made
With a crash
left some
Birthday suit vision
Standing
stunned
stupid
Abashed with a gun to the  mirror
Which crying, stammered:
If you let them dear,
Just let them,
They will Listen,
To your  chime, chiming Bells inside,
Rhyming you dread hearing songs from"
Said defense:
"Who wants to play each blow to the heart
With lawless abandon to The head?"
"letting harsh  light burn holes and leave marks wherever they feel"
Don't think so Solomon!"
Vision laughs,
reflection kneels,
Hands praying
And In the periphery, as a way to break scene here
we see the mailman Crying tears on a map
Who once watched little Ms steel-sturdy
put on her full act.
Wood chips flew thenmsky went black
Pupils dilate to her shell-shocked state Of Before,
before hell bent on Withholding,
before Taking hostage of clowns who are all ******* with
Lilith, the queen
The state that led our wayward siren to begin driving round  
in Some man-made beast
She calls Ed.

He was an alchemist,
Turning my lead tears to gold,
Because to him I was beautiful
To him I was worth more.

He was a metalsmith,
Fixing my broken copper wings
With tarnished feathers
Because to him, I could still fly.

He was a clockmaker
Resetting my fragmented cogs and beating pendulum
Spending hours and hours
Because to him I was fixable.  

But I am a just broken clockwork angel
With lead tears, broken wings, and severed insides
Rusted away by time and life
And no amount of mending can save me

Most men run like clockwork.
Each piece is relevant to the system.
Alas, I am different.
I am a clock, like all other men,
But I am filled with broken parts:
Broken gears, broken hands,
And broken everything else.
I can no longer move forward in time
For my hands are stuck
Cursed to tell and retell one minute.

Why would the clockmaker
Turn me into a monstrosity?
Is this a punishment for my sins
Or is it a challenge I cannot win?
Am I broken to start with
Or is this a cruel joke?
I wish not to retell the same time
Because it is a time that haunts me.
A time that has brought me grief.
Fix me, so I may not be stuck.

Standing in the shadows is a lonely clock that's painted red
Made from blood and carved from bone - a clockwork core that's cold like lead.
A convoluted clockmaker sits wizened by its feet
He sits and thinks, nods and knows, the clock will not its maker meet.
He tells himself he's but an ember, tells his clock it will tick on
Wrapped in black like black's in fashion, with no heart save pendulum.
He knows the clock is icy fire, if he, the maker, is its spark
He looks upon his ticking beast and knows his hand has made its mark.
He lets his clock keep ticking, never stopping, won't tell why,
And its maker curls up on the floor; his final breaths are whimsic sighs.
His lonely clock keeps ticking, ticking, ticking - ticking, ticking still,
Standing regal in the shadowed room, but bending to its maker's will.

On the evening of August 6th
The body is separated, eviscerated
Stone walls
Lost thralls
A family takes their evening stroll
And finds themselves imprisoned
Their umbilical cord, cut down the half
Microwave oven
Searing monsoon shower
Vagrant feet are shackled
Eyes are blinded with exhaust pipes
The East is not allowed to cry alone
Decay, wail on
Wail on
Contain us
Dear Marcus, free me
From these Pyrrhic victories
Clean this dusky mall
I feel safe under phosphoric lights
Guerillas swing on electric wires
Transatlantic conversations
Acquired on paper
Perverse
Desecrated
Red cloth seizes everything
Stray, running felines
The impassioned, waving flag
Kept in a velvet pocket
Stay here, stay a while
This cold era is a rising draft
The Bermuda Triangle
Quarantined
No more ships crawl along the winded shore
A time capsule
The nation sinks into antiquity
The brink of armageddon
Cusp of oblivion
Crimson hand of eternity
An old, whittled clock
Last minute
Cold Turkey!
God almighty
Peace is never promised
But we may yearn again
Nobody is free
But we are safe for another hour
God almighty
Leases on the lands
Paid in thorns
Nations playing circles
Mr. Versus Mr.
An ever-changing world
Stagnant and tightly oiled
Save this soil
It will cave in silence
The clockmaker sits in the backdrop
Readying her tools

In Deutschland as the tale is told,
A clockmaker was growing old
After making near a thousand clocks
He was tired of all the ticks and tocks
He was satisfied with what he’d done
But had no desire to teach his son.
His clocks were made with love and skill
But of cuckoo birds he’d had his fill
So stepping back was his decision
And his clocks were built with such precision
That he hoped they’d run all by themselves,
And, as he looked upon his empty shelves,
With sadness and with pride,
He noticed that his only son was standing by his side.

The son looked up and saw a tear,
As his father said, “I won’t interfere,
My clocks will run, or they will not
Ich bin nicht ein Wundergott
Und Ich hoffe sie verstehen
Meine Uhren müssen allein gehen.”
Phil Lindsey   May 7, 2015

her first love
a clockmaker
in a forgotten
teacup.

her second love
she abandoned
in the topmost car
of a ferris wheel.

her third love
an eyeless
thief

who once emptied
the coins
from his hat

onto the counter
of a small balloon

shop.

her fourth love
left sugar
on her back, and a hook

breathing
under the coat

of her fifth.

Time never sits
always stands
constantly waving its wavering hands
and it brings me relief
also fills me with grief
and a terrible belief that it's waiting for me.

Time has a price
it's not free
wait and see what you pay
for tomorrow
today.

Time will throw you a rope and then hang you with hope
for more time
and time has its laugh it's a gas
until you pass the point where the two hand meet and you meet the great clockmaker who in time is going to take you for a walk.
There is silence in the talk of time, just whispers and you know that time's not mine or yours
a little sign
one little tick a bit of sickness,the thickness of
time catches in your throat and feeling just a little hot
time waits but time is all you've got
and then there is no time at all.

I have a message
For the architect
Of This Matrix

I find this simulation
Dull, Boring, meaningless

I prayed to the Savior
The One who is
Is the Sacrifice
For our sins

He would not
Fix my shoulder
That's fine

I'm not complaining
Alot of people have it worse

I want companionship
And a female friend

I want my prayers answered
And I am making demands

But they probably won't be
The creator is just
A clockmaker

He designed the program
And watches it run

I understand
I don't pray to HIm
Anyhow

I pray to Jesus
Jesus knows what
It is like to suffer

In the human form

The trinity
Is a confusing concept
To the most erudite
Of Biblical scholars

In a year or so
I bet we will be at war
With Russia

America will collapse
And be in ruins

No future here

No country clubs
No vacations

American dreams shattered

And can you see
The starving masses

It will be
The third world
America

Food and gas being rationed

Human history
Is full of pain
And loss
And struggle

The period
Of prosperity
In this country

Has been coming
To an end
For quite some time now

Underground bunkers
Drones

It won't be
"A nice time"
Like mom always says

I'll just go sit
Under a tree

Happy to sit there
Alone
Like always

My prayer unanswered
My female friend
Never came

Maybe digging into
The ground
For little grubs

Mmmm protein
All the canned foods
Will run out
At a certain point

Maybe they have some stored
At the monastery

I grow tired
I grow weary
Of human life

I want a new experience
One time just to have
A conversation with
A caring woman

I'd like for my shoulder
To improve a bit more

Besides that I'm fairly content

Another Night

ALONE

like everything else,
you never see the collision
until you’re already crashing;
all the coins in your cup holders raining down
to be suspended like copper stars,
our hair floating around us like we’re underwater;
we are drowning in mid-air, we are just a car upside down,
headlong towards the water
rushing to a date with destiny we had wanted to cancel.
we are just an airplane shot out of the sunset,
blazing down like a comet.
and if you have only seconds left,  
have you lived a life you’re proud of?
would you change your regrets?
who are you thinking of as it all goes dark?  
who would you call to tell that you love them
two minutes from the carcass of a plane crash?
why don’t you call them now?
but see the thing is, most people don’t start living
until they’re afraid of dying.
we are creatures of comfort and comfort is in habit,
and until the car crashes
until the plane falls from the sky
until the bank is held up
until death’s staring us down,
just trying to see who blinks first,
most of us aren’t going change anything.  
we all know that the sun is going to expand
and swallow us whole,
but we won’t care until it’s singeing our eyebrows.
we like to talk about death
as if it’s not inevitable,
and we like to ignore the last page
until we’re on it.    
we are all the in between, we are all in transit,
we’re all nomads and lonely hearts and wanderers.
we’re all bandits, we’re all thieves in the night
illuminated by our emergency flashlights.
we’re all stars destined to be either
black holes or supernovas, imploding or exploding.
so maybe we’re all destined for destruction,
but i don’t care, it doesn’t matter.
not to me
because it’s all about the drive not the destination,
it’s all about the story not the ending.
and i don’t know if i believe in any god,
if i think he’d be the clockmaker or the caretaker,
and i don’t know if destiny damns us
or if we ***** our own selves over.
perhaps life, perhaps the end is predetermined
and we’re all stuck in our circuits,
we’re all mice in our own mazes.
but there’s something to be said for the middle, isn’t there?
the story doesn’t stop meaning anything
just because you know the ending.
and perhaps each of us is the director of our own existence,
and perhaps we are the chorus member of somebody else’s
and perhaps we’re just caught up in the details of it all.
what i’m trying say is,
we’re all a little ******* up
and we’re all a little messier than we let on
and we’re all just trying to figure it out.
because i have at least two existential crises a weekend,
i’m just trying to beat the world to the punch
i’m just trying to unravel the universe
before it unravels me.
i’m trying to unravel the universe with
my tongue like a cherry stem.
the hand we are dealt is not a choice
but the way we play it is
and i don’t know much about fate
but if you’d tell me, i’d being willing to listen.
i think too much about the past,  
and i can’t tell you about the future,
but on the off chance the fault is in ourselves
and not our stars, i just want you to know i love you.
if i don’t say it i’ll have no one
to blame but myself.

Some type of organic matrix
And who really cares
Look at that guy with
The ugly akward shoulder
Standing over there

Jesus didn't fix his shoulder
Despite the prayers

Life is kind of lame
And stupid
So there

An emptiness
A void
That's what life is

I told the therapist
This is how I felt

And she said
Well, you shouldn't feel that way

Turns out she was wrong
She's just a liar anyway

Never trust anyone
Who likes Disneyland
What a ******* up place

Life is meant for suffering
Everyone gets a taste

Different times
And different places
Different names
And different faces

First I went to the market
Then to work
Then to the gym

I ate I slept
Then repeated the same
******* thing
Over and over again

And I prefer to be a substitute
I'm kind of a lazy guy

Looking at the trees and sky
I don't bother asking why

It would have been nice
To be symmetrical

But God doesn't care
He's just a clockmaker
Sets the world running
And says, "So there"

And miracles are only for
People that lived in Jesus's time

I had to complain
And I know I shouldn't whine

We go through all these things
And we say these prayers
Then Jesus doesn't work
His healing magic
Seems he doesn't care

It's just a small burden
One that I can bare

I imagine myself
Looking at myself
"Hey, that's me"

Hitting ***** on the range

I made a hologram of myself
To talk to aliens on other planets
And we both agreed human life
Is quite strange

My hologram tells the alien
All the feelings I have

The alien would listen
And comfort me too

And he was there to give me a hug

We talked about Jesus
And I told him I really got tired
Of waiting for you

I'm writing this poem to Jesus as well
Asked him for forgiveness
So I won't go to hell

I'm just the every man
And I have a story to tell

Walking akwardly up the mountain
I am going to live with buddhist monks
By banging sticks against bells

And then I'll go on a great journey
With these men

I'll travel the Great Wall
I watched each step carefully
So I didn't fall

I hope to meet women on
This trip
Or someone who actually cares

The society it isolates us
It leaves us all alone

Where have all the people gone Jesus?

So I sit alone
And write these poems

I'll walk and meditate in a park
There is only the present after all

Look there is a group of young adults
About my age
Having fun throwing a ball

But I'm so akward
They didn't ask me to play

When you feel akward
In your own body
You will live and die this way!

The woman is not coming
Or no one who ever cares

It's just a repeat of preschool
And I want everyone to stay away
And I don't need anyone but myself, okay?

Now terrorists are coming
And our country has announced a war

It's a volunteer army
And I'm going to settle the score
Not afraid to die

Because I never knew how to live
People asking me why I seem
So far away and distant
They want to know what gives

I'm in the army now
With food and water
That is all I need
Every **** Jihadi
Better take heed

I do my duty
Until the job is done
Every Taliban member
Is total complete ****


A somewhat tortured individual
And no one really cares
Sitting typing on the computer

And as I drive my car
I see the birds flying there

This time
To next time
That's all this life is

Standing on the side yard
I had to take a wizz

We are born to suffer
And born to die

I do enjoy
A sweet cherry pie

Pushing my shoulder into the ground
I have to fix it
God ******!

There is quiet in my room
You won't hear a sound

A loving female friend
I have not found
And probably never will

My shoulder remains akward
Yes---Still

I guess God
Is a clockmaker
And doesn't even care

Happy to leave me deformed
And alone
Standing over there

A bit of a joke
Life must be

Look at my shoulder
And you can see

father time's wispy white beard
drifts like cumulus clouds over
his work desk. with a bony finger
he adjusts the half-moon glasses
on the bridge of his nose,
an absent-minded gesture—
this blind clockmaker
hasn't seen in years.

the gadget fidgets, plied
by his callous-tipped fingers.
over the radio, a jazz duo
croon a somber tune.
the old man wipes beads
of sweat from his brow
with the back of a hand,
then connects two wires.

sparks sizzle in the dim light
of the workshop, cascading
comet-tails in brilliant plumes,
filling the room with hues
of phosphorescent blue.
once more, he'll try in vain
to compartmentalize
spacetime.

Before the world calls again
We must make amends with the wind
Look not towards, turn around
Learn to challenge your mound
The world is erupting in earnest
Pearls rim the bulletproof vests
Another bay of mammals
Stripped of their enamel

Watchful eye, clockmaker
***** hands on blood bakers
Stagnant relics of the past
Wailing worms on salted masts
Crowded church, bullet tears
Limping for the flaking fears
Mountains bring a gilded path
For the saints, a shallow bath

Handcuffed legs, boarded hands
Folded on a calm command
Rotting hope, livid arms
For the magnate, no alarm
Bracket helm, grainy green
Swords are drawn on gabardines
No God will eat a tear
And dead they flow, winded pier

Dead they crow, winded pier

Billowed fire, riverside
Cower under thickened hides
Excess arms upon the dock
Sandinista on the rock
Triggers sold in tragedy
Lilting light, youth will cease
Leaders sleep in padded wells
Suffer mother, drink from hell

Here’s the hero, banner flown
Ruby paper, nature grown
Skeptic in the eye of rhye
Naked comics sing to die
The site is exiled from the shore
Stricken by a fiery pore
Steel-laced curtains, hesitance
Infidels in happenstance

Here is fortune, there lays war
I have sold a solid car
Husband creaks, mother moans
Children bred to take a bone
With a blonded, slanted eye
Astronauts will learn to fly
All the while, a preacher seeks
A pinstriped caddie and a freak

I am born and I am weak

you, an ever-changing evergreen – are
lovelier than yesterday’s morning rain, and
more curious than tomorrow’s budding lilacs.
lost, i find myself in your lively touch.
my pain, the mirror i peer into when i pick up a pen;
i smooth my hair, wipe the snow dust from the corners of my eyes, say a prayer.
am i a vessel of love and devotion?
or simply, am i a constant sea of fault
left bruised – bruised like rotten fruit that has fell from the tree.
if i could meet your gaze, instead of
dreaming in verses,
i would press my fingers to yours
and all but flinch at your needles
as they ***** my skin.
i envy nothing about your days – dim, even when the sun dresses in her sunday best –
except, that your immortal wisdom
is a sunset i will never see:
like a clockmaker with no sense of time,
like a bodyguard with no inner strength.
my hobby – collecting comparisons:
lining up metaphors like calendar days.
words cannot mend your pain like they mend mine

poetry moves my mountains, but will never move yours

you, an ever-constant evergreen – are
lovelier than tomorrow’s starry sky, but
trapped. if i could meet your gaze,
i would close my eyes

Driving around
Looking at the Christmas Eve lights

When to the mansion
Where they do the big
Nativity scene
Every year

Well done

Life as the show
The big show

And I thought that
A big joke
Was being played
On me

The joke of life

And I thought of God
As a neutral clockmaker

I have had some improvement
With the akwardness of my body

I thought about how
I'll always be alone

I thought about how
America will one day
Be in ruins

Am I afraid?
Not really

Savor the good days
I tell myself as the
Terrible ones
Will come soon enough

And I thought of
All the suffering
On this miserable planet

It's an empty program
An empty simulation
Just a bunch of times
With no inherent meaning

On and on
Too much time on here
Tired eyes, no female friends

When the end comes
I'll just an apple I suppose

The body is just
This thing

It has desires
For food and for ***

And the mind wonders
What this life is
Anyhow

Hours alone
My akward shoulder
Never changing
Never improving
Despite my efforts

And look at the beautiful
Fitness goddess
On instagram

In love with herself
With her body

Better I suppose not to
Take so much pride
And devote so much time
To the body

Although I do enjoy fitness

I just wish I didn't have
An akward shoulder

Oh well, nobody cares
Walking akwardly
From here to there

A world full of emptiness

Pleasuring myself to fitness babes
On instagram

And after that desire is fulfilled
The desire to eat again

On and on and on
God the clockmaker

Sitting on his throne
Or whatever

Your earth has really gone
Terribly wrong

We are tired of waiting
For the second coming
Of your Son

The saints are crying out
When will justice be done?

Life isn't that great
Sometimes it seems just plain dumb

It turns out it is a lonely place
And not much fun

100 years more or less
Will one day be over

I guess it's just a test
There better be something
Better in store

Because human life
Can be a bore

Is there golf in heaven?
I like that game

Never loved or cared for
By a female friend
What a shame

Alone sitting under a tree
Same dull face
No one can help me

My shoulder will never change
Forever akward
Still the same

If I ever see that mental health
Magazine in this home

I will throw it in the trash

If that woman asks me
Id I had a "nice day" again
I might light her on fire

When the world ends
I won't care

God the clockmaker
Made me too ugly
To ever have a gf

Self hatred
Mutates into hatred
For selfish
Obnoxious people

Jesus will preserve me
My precious Jesus friend
Nobody else cares

Everyone is afraid to die
I'm not

Some better place
Beautiful women

I get what I want
In heaven

For all the suffering
I went through here

When the world ends
I will not care
One bit

The hands of the clockmaker and his sundial troughout the following days: one shall perceive their scars and healed by one who stays from the first second to last. They may indicate the best for worst, the light for the darkest hour. And by the end of their lives, their red dots will be tangled. No one spits fire nor bleed ice. Bathed in sunshine, washed in rain. Until they discern the contrary of their sides of the world and pelted by their own shadow of their childhood.

The sounds in between things
vibrations in the middle of vibrating particles
The way America doesn’t act like all of its genes are from other countries, and killed all the natives

An entire area of intellect is the study of religion and culture
We call it social studies

The scientist calls God impossible
The Christian doesn’t study culture They keep their feet planted despite being told to go elsewhere

Politicians bank on the science of opinion
When the votes don’t mean anything
The average citizen can’t tell me how the government works
Yet you still think it’s the greatest one on earth?

People want to act like we haven’t been taught every vulgarity we know
Had to see it somewhere

Generations waging war
Trees of knowledge rejecting their own leaves
When the buds know exactly what will happen when Autumn comes around
and want it all the same

In five seconds you’ll be looking through lenses five seconds behind the current time

The clock is the victor, fate reaps the profit
And it’s all the Great Clockmaker’s tiny project

We don’t survive anymore
We **** ourselves

If Britain had a baby
And it murdered the real Americans
And it ****** Africa
And the Africans eventually got really into it...

And then everybody took a toddler trip down the stairs
Welcome to the melting ***
Crucible for change and close mindedness
A blender for the world
******* everything to it’s outdated blade
Ripping all that’s independent to pieces and slurring it together with the milk of “do whatever you want”.
What a smoothie

Welcome to the epitome of human reason
Where we race each other to death
Acceptance means compliance
We need to conform
Let me accept your self proclaimed gender
When you can’t accept the one you born in

Thoughts of God
May not always be thoughts of God
What we think of him  
isn’t always what is from him
Because killing millions of people was only allowed in the flood, Jericho, Judges, and Gomorrah

as a word, plot seems artificially unaware of its absence from a book of baby names.

online, abandonment needs a vacation.

/ GOD

comes home to a punching bag in a treehouse. to a breathing machine being fixed by a marsupial. to a son talking himself down from cooking-show fatigue. to a clockmaker’s lab rat

putting a spell
on a boat.

a harp
is the imaginary
secret
a spider
keeps
in the clockmaker’s
eighth
dream

Plunge into icy depths
I remember waking to
****** knees on the sidewalk
outside your house
hungover and so *******
desperate.
I remember the cold in
your eyes and my bones
and the words,
"Go home."
I remember the walk back
stiff and aching.
You spent years bloodletting
only to move on to
another chump when
the veins ran dry in me.
I crashed into puddles
filled with frigid Feburary
rain water and felt the
frozen blood move in
disused chambers of a heart
I was certain you'd ripped
out and mounted to point
and laugh with him and your
friends, who never liked me
at all, anyway.
Nothing hurts so bad as
the first time your heart
shatters in your chest.
*******, the skill with
which the damage was done,
like a surgeon or clockmaker
set to careful work at the task
and equaled only by the
precision with which it was
built up again from the ruin
by nimble fingers and
careful consideration, sweet
words and earnest patience.
And it was months before
I felt the "*******" inside
me leaking out
and months more before
I felt nothing at all.
One day she said something
and I smiled because it was
funny and you didn't cross
my mind at all and I didn't
know it had died then
but that, that moment with
her, was the end of you
living inside my heart.
And we didn't last either
and I don't know what
became of you or her
but love isn't made to
stretch and rebound
it lives inside all the others
and it waits with quiet
patience for you to
search it out.
Love is out there,
again and again,
just waiting to be found.