Poetry in Motion:

Every once in a while I will publish a poem to frame my emotions into some perspective and assert my human face. They may get dark, but I do welcome comments that will help me understand my life within them.

This is my attempt at the poetic form Haibun.

Upon a Pending Death

I awoke, startled by an intermittent bedside clock; its hands suspended in some idle spell.  A familiar time flashes, flagrant in full view, but, whether it is witchy, or that which is worthy—I do not know.  It is then I notice the damp silhouette impressed upon my bed, buttressed by the cornerstone of an oft-recycled nightmare.  Instead of waking to the high of lofty dreams, the circumstances revealed by this hellish clatter are simply nothing more than reminders of a trail of broken promises.  Which is why I sit here, drenched, exploited by a nothingness—sequestered by fear.  And as I look around, bewildered, shaken by this suddenness of fright, I see the strewn blankets—my security—and the absence of light, as signs of a pending doom.  Removed from rapture, maddening thoughts plague my mind; beads of sweat carve my body, burning and adding to the claustrophobic ticking synchronous with my laden heart.

Tick, tock, tick, tock, clock—
Half a century now gone;
Time is here to judge.

Nevermind, as time’s torturous ticking—malignant as the slow and steady seep from a spigot—suddenly awakes in me a morose realization: the birth of my dreams began on this date; it was 50 years ago.  Coincidence: I think not.  But sadly, there is to be no comfort at this moment, for no innocence is renewed—or imbued.  But on the contrary—time hangs heavily on my hands.  It is seldom we hear the term quinquagenarian—and it is nothing I care to pronounce, much less feel; therefore, it is time for me to heed the race against time; pay homage to time; know thine enemy.  But, in particular, when my dreams seem nothing but dispersing billows of failure wavering whimsically, out of sight, with every waking tick-tock of time.  So, as the seconds in my head countdown to an infernal descent—eerily and unnaturally abreast with the tick-tock of the clock—I cannot resist remembering the slow rhythm of reluctance and redundancy as a contrast of my past life.  And as the salty pearls trickle in wanton cadence—measuring the suddenness of it all—I act accordingly, as if upon a pending death.

Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock-Clock!–
Hands of time around my neck;
Time has passed me by.

Photo by Ahmad Ossayli on Unsplash