Tock-Tock

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock….
Old Adams and Eves on the ageless rock
awash in oceans that spit shells and muck.
The shrinking Earth can never run nor walk
as wilful living do around the clock,

so it must spin and spin as timeless talk.

***

It’s late at night, I’m counting sheep, a knock,
it's wind? I thought of Keats’s sweet hemlock.
And sleep has fled.  A tick…though not a tock.
My kitten's, on the windowsill yawning
enframed by stars where no human race is,

no Eliot's cat, one who could disconnect
nothing from nothing. Sleepy…nothing...tock.

Forgotten Hideouts

We children hid among the rocks and oats.
We hid, behind the walls, our shameful parts.
Our frightened eyes we veiled with swell of tears,
Our hurts secured inside our padlocked throats.

And so it passed, the days and months and years.
But growing up so fast, we all forgot
The places where we hid our hopes, our hearts.
The pieces left: as rank as reefer butts.

The crumpled love letters and blood from cuts 
had dyed the grass beneath the lone bleachers.
We fled from all, but from ourselves much more,
Choosing to leave the ugly parts down there:

In bathroom stalls, behind the fastened doors,

In gyms, in Gale’s garage, never in class, 

But on the balding, moist, and yellowed grass

crowded with weeds.  Don't look, we're found nowhere.