Vanish

The clock has been set,
Run the numbers round and round
Sound the alarm,
That buzzer’s going beep
Two years from now,
It’s in the cards, spread in silk
And spray painted on that wall
Shadowing your favourite walk,
One word higher than anyone could reach
Vanish –
Tacit permission scratches out from
Your pen, the lines between are empty
No one survives in a vacuum,
You’re doing your best to fill out
The forms you’ve taken,
Is it good, is it bad?
The clock counting down doesn’t
Tick, it flickers red, red digits
Silently reshape themselves,
You would do the same
Twist and torque until you can secrete
Yourself between the typeset, proportional
To your words, the osmosis of syllables
Into dead space, forging malleable allusions
Onto blank relief;
The clock won’t tick and it won’t stop,
They’ll mourn you when you’ve gone
Beat their breasts and wail your praises
Deaf and dumb, even though they pore over
The letters you left etched behind every
Closed door and unturned stone,
You served them notice, every other word
Spelling out your ideations,
That alarm’s going to ring;
Babies should be held, pressed to warm caring skin
They fail in their efforts
To thrive, if held at arm’s length,
Our physicality is the catalyst that spins
Them into someone real, whole
Alive, you hold the world at an arm’s length,
In the other hand, skin stretched over knuckles
You clutch your pen tight by your heart
That flickers red, red slowing down
Blotted over and over until the words
Run together and become the same string,
A net of gnarled knots that cinch tighter
With every loop and whorl
You set down what you know,
If only the clock would tick, tock
Giving rhythm to your final beat
Drumming your fingers, waiting to
Sound the alarm –
Time’s up.