The clock stops
 paused at just a
 tad past the
 midnight hour
 no energy left
 in those tired
 hands for 
 moving time
 beyond this 
 darkness
 silent and still
 and I am tired too 
 but it’s a tired that
 sleep can’t cure
 neither can time
 whether it moves
 or slows or 
 completely stops
 for I am already dead
 or at least mostly dead
 on the inside anyway
 much like the clock on
 the wall

 1/23/2019 ©Debbie Berk

Sitting at my desk tonight or this morning, doesn’t really matter, the hours, the days they’re all a blur but anyway as I’m sitting there writing and wasting time, more wasting time than writing, I kept looking up at the clock and it took several looks for me to realize the clock had stopped and so inspired this poem, suddenly I was no longer wasting time and actually writing.

Here’s to dead clocks reminding me I’m alive, aware still of time but also dead and knowing that time means nothing to the lost and the tired of living like a stir crazy ghost, a silent, half rotting corpse or maybe just a poet haunted by the words and the hours that feverishly go by, bye.

Photo ©Debbie Berk