Timekeepers poems on Hello Poetry

Joanna Oz Sep 2016

palms sifting over
the slick curves
of your timepiece,
infinite kickbeat
tipped the hourglass twice,
time slides down you
away from me,
sandy monument dissolving
into memory,
hazy beach heat wavers between
all twenty fingers searching
pressing
feathering up swans from skin,
bare-lipped unzipping
wanders from ear
to chin,
to whispering grins on thighs
grinding stone to sighs,
silently rising
sharp rush
of breath
pinched
release, just stay
with
me
in
me
meaning, meet me in the middle
reach the runny yolk of it all, spilling silk, rushing out all over you
all over me.

we hum into each other -
ecstasy.

Carl Sandburg

Alix

THE MARE Alix breaks the world's trotting record one day. I see her heels flash down the dust of an Illinois race track on a summer afternoon. I see the timekeepers put their heads together over stopwatches, and call to the grand stand a split second is clipped off the old world's record and a new world's record fixed.

I see the mare Alix led away by men in undershirts and streaked faces. Dripping Alix in foam of white on the harness and shafts. And the men in undershirts kiss her ears and rub her nose, and tie blankets on her, and take her away to have the sweat sponged.

I see the grand stand jammed with prairie people yelling themselves hoarse. Almost the grand stand and the crowd of thousands are one pair of legs and one voice standing up and yelling hurrah.

I see the driver of Alix and the owner smothered in a fury of handshakes, a mob of caresses. I see the wives of the driver and owner smothered in a crush of white summer dresses and parasols.

Hours later, at sundown, gray dew creeping on the sod and sheds, I see Alix again:
      Dark, shining-velvet Alix,
      Night-sky Alix in a gray blanket,
      Led back and forth by a ******.
      Velvet and night-eyed Alix
      With slim legs of steel.

And I want to rub my nose against the nose of the mare Alix.

Charlotte Nov 2016

ARCADIA

But these Eyes which fall on words inevitably unwritten,
Resonates absurdity's fingertips,
A delayed abomination,
Dancing with harlequins in their ring of retribution,
sing out with a poet’s mocking:

‘Fear your mistress/fear your maiden,
Decorated in her daisy chain of souls,
And silver to her bones from stone cold matinees’,

With Carnal thirst for the cruel phantoms
Who patrol like clockwork within a cell patterned cathedral,
Chanting monologues pairing their patience with promise,
In Shadows behind the collar they hide,
With convulsive voices knotting the synapses like shoelace,

This Fruitless curiosity meets with defeat,
The divine torture of invisibility argued with nihility,
Running blood of a guardian and a watcher's ghost,

With whom do they divulge their surrender to?
An anonymous force or a non-existent one?
Maybe they refute the toxic plains of prayer,
Maybe it is their duty to be timekeepers not lovers,

#love #god #time #angel #change #soul #visual #guardian

Randolph L Wilson Apr 2016

A Brief Shower ..

Night solitude bodes converging pressures , arising to burr and flying flame
The 'Keepers of Wrath' momentarily call the Homeric -
Oaks to attention
A fleeting , midnight memory come to pass
The train bound for Montgomery resumes it's-
journey south , over dale .. Then gone ..
Timekeepers will ring to the morning at
five bells
Scrambled , exhaustive drollery to the sound
of distant thunder

Love In Hiding Dec 2016

silent / no trust

cannot create a thing anymore
threaded from thoughts the spool has been used to the very last,
do you see?
i have became what i hated
gray areas and words faded.
No truths and dead lies on paper,
I read between lines, but
my words have become
nothing but everybodies style.
I wanna reach and contain it,
Remember / obtain it.
Sitting here with the timekeepers
hand on my fingertips,
do you know what i mean?
of course you don't /
something dies / and i cant explain what i need.

all lines included in winters zine 2016

#poetry #slam

Donall Dempsey Feb 2019

ANOTHER COUNTRY

ANOTHER COUNTRY

The hands of the clock
try to grab hold of me

as I dive through
its tick tocks

into the depths
of my private time

where mere mechanical timekeepers
and paper calendars

can not hold me
to account.

I abandon time
leave it far behind

free now
from this fragile world

of flesh
and bone

my very being
my own.

Memory is "another country
they do things differently there."

Here a second is
a century.

A moment made of
timelessness.

PastPresentFuture
collapsing into one.

And I a child again
for whom time

does not exist
only this forever now.

matthew scott harris Oct 2017

Lapsed clock watcher

how tempting and near irresistible
tuff hind me gaze drawn to the digital clock
chronograph constantly staring me back
from any electronic gizmo permanent at dock
side of the moon, where try as I might

to wrench letting thine myopic eyes alight and flock
affixed to time piece glaring at this mwm adamant
to become reminded of the passage ad hoc
of hours and minutes, essentially a contrived
modus operandi integrated forsaking those nada ****
within western civilization countless

hundreds years ago prescient insightful outliers, did lock
up present, whence practitioners of infant science,
handy dandy blues clues tinkerers ironed out nock
with an arrow poised to strike bullseye as precision

got perfected vis a vis dis cover for prefects pock
who devised a system to partition planetary revolution
of earth around the tilted axis; affected, devised, perfected
refined,contrivances to allocate equitable quotidian blocks
as dawn to dusk requisitioned some paradigm
to systematize how to know where to rendezvous

for risqué monkey business or maintain favorable rapport
with an employee/ though prior to the precision crafted timekeepers,
an innate sense inherent within the madding crowds
whose knead to acquire the basic commodities
slowly manifested into a more definitive precision
crafted gizmos as the natural circadian
sleep and wake cycles rhythm co opted

into forced system necessitating imposition on body electric
when advent of industrialization mandated
a work force to be jostled awake by town hall clangorous chimes
revving generic speedy Gonzalez to high tail their derriere
at manufacturer lest bread winner replaced by another eager desperado
to escape becoming DIRT POOR,

but pocket just enough legal tender to survive
a hardscrabble existence incessant inquiry
per the most asked question (*** hide from how big iz your ****)
turns upon the matter where space/time continuum
hums along with a silent tick tock
as if stone deaf, yet impossible to avoid the imprimatur
where air tight schedules disallow any wiggle room

inducing this *** spire ring Telly Tubby – Tinky-Winky wannabe)
accidentally bumping into Boobas, and while at a standstill
drops the urgent question "What time is it?",
without pausing to reflect what thee is and/or it iz comprende?

#seconds #minutes #hours

Splashes of Surreal Oct 2018

Scream

On the bell tower, rules
The time as it lowers
The prisoners along with his cruel crimes
The chirping raven learns to chime
With each falling fool
Timekeepers die

"May God have mercy on my enemies, because I won't."-General Patton

Randolph L Wilson Sep 2021

Where Does The Music Begin ...

In a magic workshop where new notes inch down -
an assembly line , silver haired conductors dressed to the nines
Receiving value from pipe smoking wooden timekeepers , hauled to a staff and gently placed on or between its lot in life
A rhyme in the morn , a song in the night
A ditty to ease the mourners pity
A score to the poor , tones for the bones
Reckless jazz , a rags pizzaz
A country boy croons , Piedmont blues by-
the light of a Harvest moon ....
Cacklin' hens , morning wrens
Afternoon rains , songbird lanes ......

Donall Dempsey Feb 2020

ANOTHER COUNTRY

ANOTHER COUNTRY

The hands of the clock
try to grab hold of me

as I dive through
its tick tocks

into the depths
of my private time

where mere mechanical timekeepers
and paper calendars

can not hold me
to account.

I abandon time
leave it far behind

free now
from this fragile world

of flesh
and bone

my very being
my own.

Memory is "another country
they do things differently there."

Here a second is
a century.

A moment made of
timelessness.

PastPresentFuture
collapsing into one.

And I a child again
for whom time

does not exist
only this forever now.

— The End —