TIMEBOMB

born to (work, then) die.

tick 

tick 

tick 

tick

tick 

recently i’ve  

been having a 

migraine 

that 

doesn’t 

want to go away 

my head 

feels 

like a bell 

and the sound 

keeps 

ringing inside me 

like a scream

reverberating behind lips 

i can feel it when i shake my head and 

when i gnaw on my 

food and there 

it is again 

clang like the clapper of 

a bell against my 

rusted skull 

clang 

and tick and 

beat me till i’m all jacked-up and 

and clang and tick 

it rings like the shaking of the metals grills in a prisoner’s cell

screams crawling ricocheting buzzing ringing in my ears and 

ring and 

clang and tick 

and ring 

and 

clang 

and tick 

and 

i am starting 

to feel 

like a ticking 

time-bomb

(that has not blown up yet) 

small and packed only with 

an alarm that goes 

off when i am in 

the midst of my 

paralysis-like 

sleep i cannot hear 

it but when i wake up i 

will know that it 

was ringing  

and i will 

slug away  

in bed to wonder if it 

is time to 

ring and 

clang and tick and ring 

and

why does it clang 

so heavily 

and clang 

and tick 

will you 

stay to watch me burn 

into quiet flames then bloom  

into a million little 

bells 

they hit the 

ground like raindrops on gravel 

a millisecond-long roar 

and then silence 

forever 

silence forever 

ring and clang 

and tick and 

shatter me then 

scatter me across the city centre 

i am a 

bauble on a christmas 

tree that has been pretending 

for 

too long 

my outside is not sparkly red plastic 

but some sparkly burned skin 

tethered together with a 

thousand

stitches my insides not 

void or 

hollow but bulging with 

a monster of a feeling  

growing and increasing with 

every  

ring and clang and 

tick 

it’s ticking 

and ringing and 

clang and tick and 

it ticks 

like the oven timer 

that put itself on when i 

was born and 

didn’t forget to turn itself off 

doomed doomed doomed 

with an incessant ring and 

tick clang and time has run out 

but it can 

not stop 

piece of wild machinery 

you are me let it

ring and clang and 

tick and 

clang now look at the  

insects worms bugs crawling 

out of 

my diseased bony blackened  

skull 

centipedes seep through 

the pores on 

my feet gas fumes billow 

out of my eyelids as 

i take 

my final breath it smells 

of poisoned oak reeks  

like a 

living fish 

left sprawled on 

the beach for 

a while now i think it 

is coming 

is it here 

yet 

has it come 

yet 

i can’t see it yet but 

i have a feeling it’s coming 

tick and ring and 

clang tick and clang and ring 

and tick and 

clang and tick and ring 

and ring and clang and tick 

i think it’s here 

tick tick ring clang 

and tick and tick and tick 

do you know what you have done to me? i 

ring and clang and tick 

and 

and 

and 

and i 

Five, 

Four, 

Three, 

Two,

Author's Note

wrote this when i was younger, sorry if there is genuinely zero train of thought