The Clock
Posted: 17 June 2017
Word Count: 194
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The Clock
We are born live die
work love aspire
by the clock
The then of things
the now of desire
the soon of hope
measured out
in seconds minutes hours
on the clock
Implacable indifferent
its face
tick tock
Precise unfeeling
its hands
tick tock
Childhood’s joys
tick tock
endless summers
tick tock
First love
tick tock
In sickness
tick
In health
tock
birth
tick tock
New life new mind
tick tock
I love you daddy
tick tock
Becoming has become
tick tock
Withstanding pain
tick tock tick tock tick tock
I love you
tick
I hate you
tock
Hold me please hold me
tick tock
I need you
tick
Let me go
tock
I want
tick tock
I wish
tick tock
I have time
tick
It’s too late now
tock
If only I had
tick
If only I hadn’t
tock
I wonder where
tick
the time goes
tock
It’s not dark yet
tick tock
but it’s getting there
tick tock
Things I now
tick
will never do
tock
Wrongs I’ll
tick
never right
tock
Ashes to ashes
dust to dust
no tomorrows
no todays
no regrets
footprints
tick tock tick tock………
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Comments by other Members
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 James Graham at 20:26 on 25 June 2017
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Apologies for this late response. At first I felt the poem was too long, but now not so sure. Each section has something different to say, contrasting of course with the sameness of the clock. And that monotony needs to go on at some length, even until the reader is getting tired of it – because that’s the point. All 54 ticks and tocks (if I’ve counted them correctly) are needed. Only at the end I would suggest omitting a few; end with just a single line perhaps:
Tick tock tick tock
- enough to suggest it goes on indefinitely.
A stanza that works especially well is the one beginning ‘Childhood’s joys’. It seems, if I read it correctly, to take us very swiftly, and with the greatest economy of language, through a whole generation, from childhood to ‘first love’ to ‘new life’ (the next generation) to ‘I love you daddy’.
The following are suggestions only. You might add another section without stretching the poem too far, or else replace an existing section with a new one. One that just might be a candidate for replacement would be the ‘I want…I wish’ stanza. A new section might evoke a specific life event such as a wedding:
Do you
tick tock
take this
tick tock
woman
tick tock
or even a death:
He stares ahead
tick tock
collapses to the floor
tick tock
oxygen mask
tick tock
Dad’s gone
Every time I give examples of possible additions or revisions to someone else’s poem, I look at them and think they’re indifferent at best. You will no doubt have better ideas. The general notion is to evoke a real life event, an event from your own life perhaps, your clearest memories of it, and make that soulless clock tick-tock through it all.
This seems to me a new departure for you: a poem in ‘slim’ free verse and an extended series of juxtapositions. I think you’ve made it work.
James.
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.JPG) Zettel at 00:43 on 27 June 2017
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James
Thanks for the comments. I've cut the redundant extra line at the end. You're quite right.
Don't think I can do the 'death' suggestion because the whole poem is 1st person, looking back with all the mixed emotions that entails. 'Death' needs ot be registered but it can't really I think be objectified through the 3rd person. So I put in through the 'Ashes to ashes' lines which all introduce the idea but through my reaction to it, my attitude to it, my emotion about it. I guess there is a kind of fatalistic tone thoughout the poem which in a sense the implacable, indifferent clock represents. Even in life as they say "time and tide...."
On your other suggestion: I was conscious of the danger of boring or irritating the reader and realised it was a fine balance to strike to get th epower of repetition without blunting it by overuse. LIke you therefor I was concerned about length. What milestones one selects to represent the chronology of a life will vary person to person and the danger of too many above forces one to to be selective. I decided to concentrate not on key events and facts but rather emotionally powerful or evocative moments. I will review these and see whether any I have put in lack force; and consider others that might add or be more powerful.
Thanks as ever for the comments. I'd like to write more free verse but I'm not sure I have the talent of a real poet to capture the pure rhythm of a poetic use of language without the pattern and form that rhyme and half-rhyme
gives me. The nearest I get is to let the pattern, the flow, of ideas/feelings determine the placing of rhymes and half-rhymes rather than always following a strict formal pattern. My way looks easier: but paradoxically I find it harder: because one has to so-to-speak 'listen' to the poem to 'hear' its tone and rhythm; rather than frcing language into a formalised structure.
My way probaly doesn't work too well as no one has ever seemed interested in publishing my stuff. But some positive reaction from yourself and WW members is an encouraging next best.
Z
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 Cliff Hanger at 12:52 on 27 June 2017
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Hi Zettel
I nearly missed this one somehow. That would have been a real shame because I think it's really effective. You capture the monotony of life mixed with its pleasures and anguish really well. James is right to highlight how you make free verse 'work' here. I think his suggestions might add a lot you know, if you experimented with them. Say with the aside form that Oonah and James's recent work has followed (I'm experimenting with this a bit myself just now). You could have some life events adjacent to the clock ticking, representing how we don't notice the clock when we're living life and then suddenly it's upon us. I love the way you weave your expertise in philosophy throughout this, showing rather than telling. It makes you think. The repetition does bring a multi-sensory element into it. You can feel and hear the clock which gives concrete form to intellectual concepts.
Good one.
Jane
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Zettel at 01:52 on 29 June 2017
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Thanks Jane/James
Glad you like it.
I have completely reconstructed some poems (indeed am currently trying to do so with the last one I posted) as a result of James's insights and advice. So I have no reluctance to take board and respond to his advice. However in this case for the reasons I have given I don't feel to introduce an 'event' or to explicitly bring in death in quite the way he suggests, works with the basic approach of the poem. However as you can see I have tried to accommodate one suggestion by re-expressing the 'event' of marriage by (I hope) emotionally evocative extra lines in stanza 4. I hope it works.
I felt from the start that the challenge here was to overcome the negative aspect of constant repetition. To do so it seemed to me it was necessary for every 'tick' and 'tock' to draw some resonance, some emotional force from what it 'measures'. For every repetition to seem slightly different because of its relation to a different emotional experience. I decided that events as such would not carry enough emotional force to do that. How do we 'capture a 'life'? Well I have birth, childhood, love, marriage, parenthood, ambition, hope, disappointment, illness, moral regret and an intimation of mortality. One could always add more 'events' but, whatever its merits expressively, I feel that emotionally it is now as complete as I can make it.
best
Z
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James Graham at 21:27 on 29 June 2017
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My idea about introducing death in that way wasn’t very good. Your introduction of marriage in St. 4, between childhood and parenthood, is well judged. Each little section of that stanza carries a brief but very clear signal pointing to a phase in our human life-cycle. There is nothing flowery or over-egged about this, or indeed any part of the poem, but your arrangement of these significant moments together with the unrelenting ticking of clock time makes a powerful statement. Yes, it certainly does work.
And I think that throughout the poem you have chosen and placed those ‘signals’ very well. There is a certain emphasis on the about-turns of life – ‘I need you…Let me go’, ‘I have time…It’s too late now’ for example; and I like ‘Things I now will never do…Wrongs I’ll never right’ followed by ‘no regrets’. There’s something that rings very true about this, though it’s quite hard to express in any other way. There will always be ‘Things I now will never do’ but for the most part it’s because life is too short, and since we can’t help that, there’s no point in regret. As for ‘Wrongs I’ll never right’, this takes me back to Cato the Younger, who tried as hard as anyone in history to right wrongs, and took his own life not because he had regrets but because he refused to live a compromised life. What a remarkable man!
There is no need for every poem to be expressive, that’s to say full of gorgeous highly figurative lines. This is a poem of arrangement and juxtaposition. It depends for its effect on elements other than decorative language, and works very well.
It’s not perfect, however. Where you have ‘it’s face’ and ‘it’s hands’, change ‘it’s’ to ‘its’!
James.
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James Graham at 19:37 on 30 June 2017
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Just one more thing. It's always interesting to know whether or not one's reading of a poem is close to the author's intention. ‘Things I now will never do…Wrongs I’ll never right’ followed by ‘no regrets’. What I said about this in the above comment - is it what you had in mind, or was it something different? Even shades of difference can be interesting.
James.
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Zettel at 01:18 on 01 July 2017
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You were quite right James. I'd like to think that there are few 'wrongs' in my past and certainly none so bad as far as I know, that I cannot in a sense 'forgive myself for'. I don't know the details of the Cato story but hard though it sounds, taking one's life is not a way of responding to an 'unpayable debt' that I can admire greatly. I have no truck with 'original sin' etc and one of the great lessons in life I think is to realise and accept that we are all 'flawed' and forgiveness it seems to me is one of the most precious of human possibilities because one of the hardest. But to forgive the person - not the deed; and without a pile of dubious metaphysics to rob it of its genuine generosity of the human spirit.
best
Z
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James Graham at 21:37 on 02 July 2017
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All of which shows how thought-provoking the last few lines of your poem are. I too find the concept of original sin unacceptable, but forgiveness is indeed precious. Thank you for this poem, which as I have said is one of arrangement and juxtaposition, not highly decorative language, but is compelling nevertheless.
James.
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