41 Days & Nights on Maui With the Muses

I hate the tick & the tock of a clock
Its preemptive strut for a walk
mocks the rhythmic stroll of my flesh & my soul
no sleep can compete with the zombie repeat
      of its beat
no poem will om nor conceive a muse we’ll believe
if its song depends on a watch up its sleeve or
a big ben hammering pentameters
      from the ins & outs of a dome
So, when ever I can,
      unless they’re the heart’s silent ticker
I smother their poke & their gallop & paint
      their faces opaque
these timepieces of ungiven peace,
      these hickery-dickory docks
of no mice’s house,
O how I hate, with an inexorable ache
the pile driving march, the pompous starch,
      the sound & the look
whether next to the bed, in the nook,
      on wall or swinging from
chains in pockets of lame grandpaws,
the lockstepping click & knock,
the wicket-wickeding,
jiminey-cricketing tick & tock of a
clock!