"clocktower" poems
concrete shades the yellow-lighted symphony.
The peso-heavy take taxis;
security valets motors steaming castle gates.
I ask, which way is the 158?
Indifferent, they say, walk straight neath the freeway —
there is a bus stop two blocks away.
****
****
****
Clocktower hands transpose Cindarella-brick
to embers of electricity,
a factory aside scrawled graffiti;
fingers timidly ricket pitchfork fences.
Palermo is 11 km north.
Where is the north star?
I look straight ahead, repeating what
the travel blogs said like,
Be lost, don’t look lost;
flappy plastic maps scream vulnerability.
Be lost, not rich;
iPhones in gotham alleys are batman signals.
Walk fast.
Don’t pay attention to the eyes that pass.
Careless ponytails and brass hair attract
glances back.
Two blocks deep into the homeless shelter
beneath freeways, blankets
in shopping carts toppled over,
cars screaming away the symphony
into shadowed silence between heels striking.
Tunnel breath emerging on the other side,
gasping past stacked Jenga towers,
wired with antennas and empty clotheslines;
families and crack ****** sleep inside.
Safety’s herd thins as couples dart left down
cobblestone tributaries
that either lead to bus stops or parked cars.
I walk straight ahead with
sleeve-covered hands that swing like sticks
in the wind.
The symphony turns to
heartbeats and footsteps
plucking quickly;
fearing the 180 behind,
to zombies with sunken eyes,
thirsty for a thirty-cent high.
Sep 5, 2014
Sep 5, 2014 at 8:45 PM UTC
*The music in the library was you,
My saving symphony, a silent movie,
That Jason Reeves song which
Never fails to wow me,
A whisper,
A ***** whisper,
The ancient sound of a page's
Turning, a bell-ringing
From the ***** icecream vendors
Of my humble Homeland,
Or the comfy sound
Of an oven-toaster.
I was enchanted
To meet you.
Had you not come to me, love-ling,
And fling the old cobwebs away
From the bore of a book called
Moby ****
Which my life was,
Then all the dust of the Earth,
Of the shelf, of my flesh
Would have gathered
In me, burying the papyrus,
The scroll, a fragility—
My heart,
My ever-lost.
Time ticked like a man clambering,
An ambulance, a clocktower
Pierced through the chest, the soul,
The spirit.
But your eyes sang, songstress.
My spirit hoped.
Your body leaned,
Communed.
Your ear
Touched my ear—
A melody, a harmony,
An embrace.*
© 2015 J.S.P.
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 3:39 AM UTC
*[Note: Subject X's accounts contain no record of a proper name.
The following is Subject X's first entry and is believed to have been written shortly after the Time Anomaly began]*
A Full Stop?
It's all been suspended... The birds, the deer, the breeze... All of life in animate suspense... except for us, the people...
On April 18th 1955, as best as can be described, time itself-- the fundamental instrument of evolution and Life-- stopped. At exactly 7:20 am, as per the Clocktower at the end of main street. As per the pocket watch in my hand. As per the alarm clock upon my nightstand. As per the humming birds suspended mid flight in my front garden.
All of nature, still...
Have we come to a "Full Stop"?
Ask me how long it's been... ask me.
It feels as though it's been a few "days". The only indicator I have of this, is the panic spreading rapidly across town.
"Frankie's kid just dropped dead. Running track. The kid was in better shape than "Mickey" Hargitay. Collapsed halfway through his 4th lap... Nothing but skin and bones, they found. Barely a body-- you would have thought it was an old man.", told stories of high crass.
"My mother passed last night... she walked... She walked and aged a week with every step.... too weak to barely speak, she whispered, 'Here.'
After 2,600 steps the bony woman clinging to my arm-- my own flesh and bone, my creator--
laid to rest." , told stories of elegance.
As for me...
The only time I know is written on my face...
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 1:40 AM UTC
I once had it.
It was in my hand.
The moment I went to close my tattered fingers around it, to keep it in my grasp, they began to oxidize.
Not only was it as if the caretaker had forgotten to properly oil the cogs of the clock in the tower in the center of the town, he had also forgotten where he had hid the skeletal key.
The fingers began to crumble, what was once hovering within nanoseconds of my grasp had slipped eons away.
I once had it.
I let it go.
Go.
Go.
Oct 15, 2014
Oct 15, 2014 at 8:57 PM UTC
When the crowds started their own Kristallnact
in the big smoke, it seemed Smaller
when tracing danger zones on maps, more and more
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-
(Warning, X marks the spots that are burning)
It was a stampede of hooves money was lost on,
shattering windows and smashing streetlamps
and all the same, shrubs and roses were stormed on.
The horses don't have names anymore.
There are beings almost human
trapped in hospitals, trapped inside the women
not yet hampered by the world,
and those who created the women,
three decades before, sometimes
only a dozen years ago, somehow
still waiting and still wanting
another human being to be born.
If I could dream, I'd dance in my sleep,
but I am in the same stillness,
in the same uniform,
in search of footprints to follow,
for hunger, for scorn,
for dying flowers and an unknowable moon,
and the babies now laughing
and terrified and bored and the good ones
who fell in love with the wrong ones
or had too much, of the good or bad, too soon.
The only secret I've been let in on
is that it's the same when you die
as it was when you were born, but
all of a sudden, something small
in the churches and their clocktower clouds,
in the wires of a telephone,
in laughter in the sun,
is enough to allow sleep to come,
dreamlessly but peacefully,
inside knowing that even if we feel alone
we will always belong
to everything, everybody, everyone.
Oct 11, 2013
Oct 11, 2013 at 2:37 PM UTC
My belly
Among ***** made silhouettes
Shedding (the outside of) my breath
Sudden body shakes makeover the silence of
Days
Wrapped in ***** stained dreams
Without an end to my bleeding
The smell of **** is evident
In the same ways that
Blame is kept in tact
A muffled voice is heard through the air
Giant particles grasping at the face of my dawn clocktower
Simulation in the evergreen hands
The very odd feel that denies faith
An old familiar disgust that overflows from my pores
Instant
Glorified
Pure
Sanctity
The calling of angels ******* on a downward spiral
Towards my vascular thoughts
Like a disease which interrupts the collision between planets and words
My pixie movement through the ice parade
An unlikely sorrow from you
What is that distilled sound coming from your hands?
And if the traces of heroine on my breath are mine alone
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 3:16 PM UTC
watching time go by
with you
is like carving your name into a katalox.
we guard the time
trying to slow down the inevitable
like growing young again.
staring at the small figures
that determine the night
that was once ours.
clawing onto the clocktower,
holding onto the arms
that don't stop for us.
a battle always lost,
time as inexorable as our love
and the pain we will meet.
the death we will kiss
on the cold black lips
after we see that the once seemingly unstoppable things
become needless with time.
Dec 19, 2014
Dec 19, 2014 at 11:25 AM UTC
Orion
Part III
The staircase has fallen between them,
And longings for love were dispersed.
But only one force lay against them;
The Phaneron, Man was diverse.
The souls of the elders were thought of as weak,
The mountains became flat as land.
Our spirits believed to have conjured an owner,
The thieves falling out of the plan.
The makers are meeting atop the clocktower;
Without hands.
My mind is their plan.
Jul 5, 2014
Jul 5, 2014 at 11:24 PM UTC
*My scars did not lose her, my hurting did
And did not. I did it, maybe, maybe not,
Like losing that one breath over the essence
Of a weak-willed wind, kissing the sad waters.
I did it, like time wasted over saving precious time, like
One of two great doubts has finally believed
In the other, becoming a painful truth,
A shadow, a light, a boat, an anchor, a clocktower,
Like I fully understood a green-colored sun
In a coloring book. But what does it matter?
What veil could hide the melancholic moon
Forever? I love her, like I did, like truly now,
But did not, like her absence anchors me to sanity,
Like missing her was to teach the stars of something,
Something like geography or mythology, like hazards
Buoy me to the chronic pain of safety, like to free-fall,
Quickly, as lightning or the peregrin. I loved her,
Like failing to whistle with two fingers, like
Reinventing Miro's Blue Star at a canvas, over and over,
And bungle at it. I love her, like it means to love her now, like
The urgency of loving me when I cannot love myself,
And she did. She did. I love her, I know,
I only know, because I never did.*
© 2015 J.S.P.
Feb 21, 2015
Feb 21, 2015 at 3:57 AM UTC
sun-swords and their respective sun-warriors
hack away at the ogreish clouds.
among the towering daisies
flowering into their artful form,
we smile a little too deliberately.
the clocktower strikes thirteen.
before the day is through,
we will have faded.
Apr 14, 2011
Apr 14, 2011 at 1:10 PM UTC
Like a clocktower, I
Shudder thudthudthudthud
The second hand races
Beyond itself, beating
Out an uneven rhythm
On tired masonry
Whose brittle mortar cracks
Under the strain of the sky
Waiting for a bird or
A breeze to knock me down
Telling me it's okay.
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 1:31 AM UTC
Mother, I'm sorry you birthed a ghost
Mother there is a song of mourning rising from the streets but I'm not sure I know how to cry anymore
Mother they're calling for me, at the gallows, at the sermon, at the university, at the madhouse,
and maybe they're right, but my voice is too weak to tell them that
Mother you know I'll have to go to them, sooner rather than later
Mother I am praying to a clocktower for the end,
I am on my knees speaking in tongues between twin pillars of apathy and boredom,
I am tying my tongue to nooses to hang my shame from the trees where I carved my switchblade prophecy when I was young and angry,
Younger and angrier, anyway
I am singing with the homeless & the dogs on the street corner, burnt out anthems of heartland heartbreak too ******* sad to be classics
I am with the junkies, the proof of their gospel is tagged on the walls of my sinus cavity
I am with the anarchists, they put a pen in my hand like a rifle and told me aim for the head
I am king of nothing on a throne of empty words
Don't pray for me mother, I won't hear it
Mother I can barely hear you speak
From behind salty seraphim eyes you speak
"Where are you?"
And I speak
Where were you when the enemy was at the gates?
When the bombs fell like rain?
When the world went silent and I woke with my crown soaked in blood?
When I was a lion backed into a corner by the wolves?
You knew I was strong, mother
But you also knew the wolves would never ******* rest
And that one day they'd tear me apart
So you spent that time stitching my epitaph together from caved in walls and shattered glass,
From rage and love and rage again
Blowing the dust off your grandfather's Bible,
"Forgive him Father, he knows not what he does"
I know not what I do, Mother
My ruin is mine alone
Do not let me destroy you, Mother
Scatter my ashes in your garden and sing my praise to the congregation
For you brought me the Gold which made me grey too early,
and it is for me that your gold will be made grey,
Too ******* early
Mother, look at me
It is for you I am restless, for you I am discontent, for you I am burning out my nervous system seeking a ******* answer
And for that, Mother,
I will thank you to my grave
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 1:18 AM UTC
The great clocktower stand dilapidated
Grinding, churning, clicking and creaking
As the thick black clouds cover the dim moon
The evening is silent
Save for the calls
Of distant treacherous birds
The bell tolls at midnight
Gently swaying the flames of candles
Within the upper rooms of the tower
As the bell slows
The candles go out one by one
As if a sentient breeze passed through
Until they were but wisps of smoke
Swirling beneath a fading moon
Never to be lit again
May 4, 2017
May 4, 2017 at 3:50 PM UTC
A vaguely lit lampshade
Pictures the streets
Where tiny crickets and fireflies
Awaken from their slumber
As many a number cannot tell
The livelihood of the suburbs
Where owls fly and wolves howl
In a sea of light emitting from the lockets
And at dawn the bumblebee flutters
In an elongated mantra
The day awakens, the night rests
And the puppets emerge from their cases
The city where hearts beat and break
Where the puppets dance to the clocktower in the west
But tonight I forgot my key
And remained at peace in my locket
Nov 9, 2017
Nov 9, 2017 at 11:14 AM UTC
This was meant to be a haibun. After the
first sentence, I folded the list of rules into a sparrow. I go for a walk,
pass by the place where people write haiku
and roll juxtaposition into irony
as they eat their meals with the wrong
ends of their chopsticks.
he lifts gari with his left hand—
a slot machine jangles
A patron’s nearly full dish of wasabi sits amongst sushi platters that, except
for the left behind rice-explosions,
have been emptied. Around the corner,
a shaman stands near the clocktower
where the grass has died from a winter’s salting. The shadow of a ginkgo leaf flutters on his face like the wings of Buson’s moth. I want to turn off all the lights so that it can see.
The systems are broken. **** The systems are failing.
Further up Beverly St., an autistic boy
plays with Lego on a front porch. I try to remember his true name, and hope that
he can help break down the foundations, raindance his mind around the blocks’
angles and lines to solve an equation with a variable that is the shaman understanding
why the boy pretends to not see us.
Turn off the lights so that we can see.
Nov 12, 2021
Nov 12, 2021 at 11:19 PM UTC
Like the gears of time, the moon’s ocean moves endlessly
Sep 22, 2015
Sep 22, 2015 at 6:25 PM UTC
You keep your ghosts well hidden
Such an important place you’ve been
All the histories you helped in the making
Their secrets you hold unseen
Your baronial beauty and grandeur
Are what entrances and enslaves
Your image, which you don’t mind sharing,
Has them coming here in waves
You gave students a home to protest
And glory to those racing your strikes
You’re a place for staff to feel proud of
Even your twitter feed got likes
Your loyal chimes keep us moving
They’re heard through the campus widely
Otago wouldn’t be the same without them
So thank you Summertime Sidey
You fought off threats of demolition
And dared us to be wise
Became a symbol of higher learning
And helped make excellence our prize.
Mar 18, 2018
Mar 18, 2018 at 4:04 PM UTC
And I write these words like I'm talking to you in person.
Like you'll somehow hear me.
Like when it rains you forget your umbrella and embrace my secrets like tiny droplets that brace your skin.
And all I want is for my words to take a physical form.
Because I've never been beautiful but with you I felt like so much more.
And you'll never know that.
I didn't even try that day it snowed.
I didn't need a coat cause you shielded me from the cold.
And that blizzard seemed like a sunshine followed by a rainbow.
I just wanted you to remove these holes in my soul like I removed that empty space between your smile.
Because I could always tell when you were faking it or when you knew we wouldn't last a while.
And I'm writing this poem because I couldn't find another way to say I love you.
Because when I see your face I fall for you.
Again
Again
Again
Again.
And I've never been so sane until I knew you.
You were like the nector from honeydew.
You were like every reason I made an excuse for forgetting my car keys.
So I could make an excuse for our time together to never end.
But I guess that was my fault.
Should've known you can't buy time with a pen.
I can't rewrite the end
I can't even write a love letter to you without making it seem like I'm making amends.
Like creating a sense of writers block will cast a shadow long enough to outcast my ambitions.
And I wish I could offer you more than my love.
I wish I could offer you my being.
Maybe that would be enough.
A collection of memories spawned in my head.
Like shifting gears to a clocktower that was long past dead.
And this grandfather clock was rigged from the start.
It chose to rip out pieces of my heart
When the dial striked 12.
And just like I knew every night I'd go to bed loving you the same.
But never have that in return.
I wrote this because I don't know how to say I'm in love with you without being straight forward.
I wish I could say it in these words.
And then maybe you'd fall forward.
And I'd catch you not looking for a reward but so my heart would leap out of my chest. And maybe you'd feel my love when it left.
May 7, 2017
May 7, 2017 at 1:09 AM UTC
The starlight on my ceiling
And the silence in the air
Echoes like an untouched ocean,
quivering in absolute stagnation.
The wings of an angel,
The kiss of loneliness.
Life’s palpitating heartbeat
Brings Anxiety to its knees.
Drifting into an opal iridescence,
my subtle starlight turns to faded dreams.
The wistful echoes of my ocean
Turn like the amber gears in a sunset clocktower.
A timeless, transient frame becomes our reference,
and our stardust turns to amber shards once more.
Oct 24, 2023
Oct 24, 2023 at 1:23 AM UTC
If home is where the heart is then so help me god, I’m going to need a map and a fast car cause I think my heart fell out my chest at a gas station at midnight
or in my hometown park,
possibly above the clocktower on New Years eve and almost certainly one of the countless nights when I danced with fairies and ghosts.
I promise the music will be incredible
and i won't stop driving unless I'm beside the ocean.
I won't start crying unless the sun is rising.
the waves and the sky break every day with no apologies or shame.
I will finally realize why broken hearts are the most beautiful of them all.
- I'm going home
Nov 6, 2017
Nov 6, 2017 at 6:24 PM UTC