The Ticking Clock
Joseph L. Bensinger
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The clock repeats its iron song,
its pendulum a patient blade.
The hours march, unbroken, strong,
through shadow’s hush and daylight’s fade.
Yet something waits between each chime,
a silence thick, a breath held fast.
The pause extends, distorting time,
as if the next might be the last.
Each tick consumes a fleeting breath,
each tock erases what was near.
It feasts on moments, feeding death,
and leaves behind the husk of fear.
It drains the echo from the hall,
it strips the color from the day.
No voice survives, no step, no call—
the ticking eats the world away.
It gnaws the stars, it bites the moon,
it drinks the dark where silence lay.
No breath remains, no hope, no tune—
all swallowed by its slow decay.
The ticking slows, its jaws now stay,
its hunger starved, its prey is gone.
A faltering beat—
a dying song.
Tic.
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Joseph L. Bensinger is the author of eleven previous poetry collections: Man, Ships, and the Sea; Journeys Through the Tapestry; Beginnings and Ends; An Ekphrasis of Genesis; The Shadows Dance; and the six volume series including The Nested Soul; Layers of Consciousness; Echoes of Creation; Cracks in Glass Towers; Reflections on Machine Awakening; and The Thought Processor. His poems have appeared in Haiku Journal, WestWard Quarterly, Ocean Magazine, Möbius, and The Soliloquist Journal. Before retiring, he worked as an electronics project engineer, a computer systems manager, and a teaching anthropologist. He now spends his time gardening and writing poetry.
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Posted in "Boo"din: The Ticking Clock, Oct. '25 and tagged in #boudin, #poetry, Poetry