Five Short Poems About Time

Five Short Poems About Time
(NaPoWriMo, Day 9)


I

My clock's
hands have fallen.
Now they creep 'round corners --
to spinal clench -- my burdened neck --
Now squeeze!

II
A chime!
The clock strikes none
amidst the maelstrom,
I am overwhelmed, defeated.
This time.

III
To slay
immortal beasts
like deadlines, you'd think we'd
have learned by now we need more than
harsh words.

IV
No time.
There is no time.
Yet the pendulum swings.
Is it moving time forward? Back?
At all?

V
I need
to be in time
for some thing, but that's lost.
My girl's brown eyes pleading for mine
are now.

(c) Julie Bartha-Vasquez, 2013

Here's a Zen Koan for You:
What time is kept by a clock
with no hands?

Notes on the Poem(s)
It's poem-palooza today! Here's what happened. The hands on my livingroom wall clock fell off earlier this week. Just dropped off the face of the clock. The pendulum is still swinging. It still chimes -- I assume on the hour. But both of the hands on the clock are inside the case, and it's not in a spot that's easy to reach. So we haven't gotten up there to fix it yet. But in the meantime, it obviously inspired quite a bit of poetry!

One of the NaPoWriMo writing prompts last week was to write a cinquain. I'm very new to learning all the different forms of poetry out there and the cinquain seemed very simple and elegant and I wanted to give it a whirl, so I just went to town, using this damned clock as my inspiration. There's something very anxiety-provoking, ennui-inducing and zen-like about having a wall clock that both keeps time, but doesn't keep time. --WNG