Typewriter

it never slows

speeding faster than my fingers can hit

the letters, like bare feet to black gravel

chasing ideas down dark alleys

and over brick buildings until

they slip into the gutters

drifting with the liquid underneath

the ground on which I stand

 

it never sleeps

wide awake and waiting

to prey on my restlessness

and though I turn off the lights

to black out the white

pages sitting in their bed

it still types

and types

stroking the keys: a piano player

in the middle of the night

 

it never silences

drowning out the tick of the clock

I now tell time not by seconds

but by words per minute

and it grows

like an oil spill in freshwater

snaking its way downriver

until my boat begins

to sink in the ink