Clockwork (Count the Hours)

There's a night sky out there

shared by a world I yet long for.

Lost in the expanse of distant shores,

tasting for myself the exotic air...

A place beyond the empty space

between these walls and my sullen face.

The habitat that's slowly come to replace

vibrant lands enshrined in my pillowcase.

I just can't seem to sleep these days.

It's too much to shut the system down.

Every thought leads me somewhere new-

some scornful corner of my point of view.

where shadows await to make me stay,

forcing me into their acquiescent pawn

long beyond the eventual call of Dawn.

Driving into naked flesh their screws

so my errant mind can never stray

away from the path of silent decay.

Even when the light is deep enough to drown

I'll be right here, as the cycle continues...

              

***

Tonight I find my mind rushing, like a river,

bounding through the endless curves

of the daily madness I observe.

Even now, it makes me shiver.

Give me a chance to leave a mark-

I'll smear some color on this consuming dark.

Disease or not, my mind still works

and I'll be damned if I'll let it rot.

By the end of this road, I may have gone berserk,

but even a madman clings to a train of thought

even if the tracks lead somewhere he already forgot.

I don't care if any of this makes sense or not,

this is coming straight from the heart

when I say that... this is all that I've got.

So, even if I never get a shot-

if my words never sing and my pain's never art,

and my life slowly ends before it could ever start.

I'll still be here, year after year...

scratching at these pages like clockwork.

Author's Note

I don't really know why I wrote this particular poem. The whole sleep deprivation thing's been annoying lately, but it's nothing new - been dealing with that since... always. I guess I ran out of other things to bitch about at this point. But, as this poem laboriously states, I dunno what else to do with myself these days if I'm not writing SOMETHING, and inspiration's been a fickle mistress the last several months. Still, everything hits it's saturation point eventually, doesn't it? If only I might be so lucky...