The Time Between Ticks

The clock ticked with all of the impatience in the world,
And I wondered what happened to the time between ticks.
Between the ticks it seemed that perhaps the rest of time swirled,
But it was in the nature of man to ignore clever time’s tricks.
We decided ages ago that more time was unneeded,
We killed it and spent it and left it unheeded.
We spat the name time and cursed at the late
And we set our whole calender’s to await for one date.
But the waiting . . . Oh the miserable waiting.
The empty, and formless, and restless damned waiting.
We shoved all of the waiting to the time between ticks,
Uncaring, unfretting, of the things that went with.
We lost the patience, the wondering, the time to just sit
But it happened so fast…
No time to walk back from the crime we’d commit.

So with each passing second, another stray thought was pushed
To the time between times until that time became smushed.
It became so full of the moments, which had been meant to serve
Each tick in itself so that it could be observed.
When the ticks went unnoticed, with no time in between
They themselves became lost to the people too keen
To assign every tick a thing of its own
And each subsequent action became the wind blown.

The people did more, of that they were sure,
But they could not seem to recall what the more were.
With no time to reflect on a thing now complete,
It became truly impossible, to know a feat was concrete.
Each tick came on faster, each tick more demanding
“Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick” a man screams from a landing.
“I can’t take one more tick, I refuse, its absurd!
‘My life ruled by the ticks I can’t get in a word!”
…
And then he just sat, as the ticks sped away,
And he anxiously twitched at his now tick-less day.
The time, all of the time, so much damn time.

He could not understand, where had it come from?
Just a moment before, the time, it had run from
He and the world, as they gulped up in batches
Each tick of the world and burned the extras with matches.
Was it possible? Could it be?
There was no issue with time but an issue with he.
He sat and he wondered, he sat filled with patience,
And he suddenly noticed that strange way the sun glints
Off those thin, wispy clouds held at the top of the sky,
And the sitting and waiting brought a tear to his eye.
Not enough time? What a strange, foolish notion.
Time was all there was, an unfillable quotient.
Not enough time? He chuckled at the ideal.
It was only you and your rush that had made that thought real.

Do not think the clock, and all of its ticking
Is the reason for which, you go on living.
You live, the clock ticks, that is the order.
And I know that the ticks do make life feel shorter.
Yet do you not think it possible,
To live life in some moments
Without knowing the time?
To soak in every second and the time in between?
And if you do not think so, then this poem is for you.
If it bothers you that the poem lost its beat, lost its time,
And you sit there angry, and uncomfortable in that which follows no
Pattern and instead simply is.
Then you should know . . .

That one day, perhaps a time long from now,
The ticks they will burst, this I can vow.
Too full of the time which was meant for between
And should you be unprepared, ugly will be the scene.
For a person unused to that time meant for drifting
Will go mad with the senseless, the strangeness of shifting
From moment to moment with a second to breathe
From tick to tick with a breath of relieve
From action to action with relief to unheave.
So you’d best practice now, take a moment for pause,
Linger in the space of a rhyme that never -