Very Bad Poetry

And the clock winked.... it knows.... what I know at this hour.
The solitude that comes when the lights go out and the mind runs wild.
The shadows on the walls that mock your imagination... provoke it... enhance it.

This scene is all too familiar.
The shadows cast by the fan blades
The creak with every move made
The unanswerable questions that cause me to study the tiles in the hall,
or the cracks on the walls.

If you stare at it long enough, you can give anything meaning.

The clock winked again... or maybe it blinked.
Its hard to tell considering how it is digital.
But even without a face it has a expression and a tone.
He sure has a lot of gall, to be so useless and all.
But he is in awe of the night that I am no stranger to.

The feeling when you wake alone, and the room is so cold.
The silence in the room fills, and although it keeps me still,
it still gives me the chills.

They ask why you can't sleep.
They ask why you can't get up.
But they don't ask where you go.

What did the bold poet see as he died in the hospital bed,
whimpering for mercy on his soul?
Surely it was nothing in the biblical sense.
The things that crawled on the walls were not the fallen of an inconsistent fairy tale
meant to keep the villagers silent and circling the marketplace.
They were something more revealing.
What did Kurtz know at that last moment, that I do not?
I'll tell you it was revealing,
but hollow and now meaningless
if all that was awaiting was the option of pearly gates or seas of fire.
There is no use for a lesson that cannot be learned from and used in the future.

The clock thinks he sees the existential truth,
but really all he has seen is a pedestal.
A pedestal that he can't remember how he got on,
let alone how to get off of.

Its too late for that.

That persona is soaked into the skin, leaking out with every grin.
A wince with every word, a choking cough with every scoff.

But its too late for that.

A product of our surroundings,
frowning upon their work.
Regrets screaming beneath the silence.

But its too late for that.

I'm tossing and turning in blankets and sheets.
They tell me I'm alone in my defeat
But despite popular belief, I don't care if you are safely at home.
I don't care at all... Numb to the touch, deaf to the call.

Yet I cannot help but question that lesson without a test...
it seems too ironic to be true.

T Buk has published 2 more terrible poems since joining on 30/11/99. Read more of T's terrible poetry at the anthology. Here are three of T's latest works: