The Mysterious Clock

Try to feel the body
Without asking yourself
About other bodies

With other selves inside,
Or about how each self
Came mostly from outside.

Feel the mechanisms,
Not only the calming,
Meditative rhythms

Of settled pulse and breath,
But all the counter clocks
And alternate rhythms

And stochastic events,
Constant liquid ticking
Of the waves that are gears,

The gears that are waves,
Discombobulated
Clicks and interruptions,

The whole shambolic feat
Of rising up against
Entropy as it falls.

Do you recall Charlie
Surfing on his stomach
Through the teeth of the gears?

Chaplin’s belly was gears,
And his neurons were gears,
His blood a timing belt

In the moments that scene
Was filmed, mysterious
Waves and machinations

Of hungry, wasteful, fueled
Minute precisions, time,
Any change with rhythms.