- abigailburdess
Fish
Updated: Jan 12, 2021
I wrote this poem about losing my mind when I was about nineteen.

Oh yes, you know me,
I am waiting for something holy
And for something true.
Behold the mad!
Here they stand
In groups, not holding hands.
My father’s house
Is two up two down.
I have been told to mind the store
And the walls are beginning to get me down.
The big clock frowns
And, in patrician manner, asks,
Just when I will see sense?
And just how long
I think I can continue
Sleeping with old Father Death
And reaping the rewards
And talking to myself?
And if I nip out for a cigarette
What time do you call this?
He asks,
I don’t know, I reply,
You’re the fucking clock.
And I long Oh! I long
To take the clock
And break the clock
And fake a suicide.
I don’t know, detective
Perhaps he just got tired of it all -
The endless fucking ticking.
So he leapt from the wall
He wrenched himself free
from physical space
He turned up his face to the stars
And threw up his little pointy hands
And lay there, gawping, like the wee fish he once was we once were.
You do know,
The exact time of the crime
And that must be,
At least
Some use
Call a priest.