Poems about watch

I love an old pocket watch
Hanging at the end of its chain
To look upon its beauty
And to hear the ticking of its spring

To see through its cracked crystal
The beauty of the hands
As they slowly count the moments away
One by one as grains of sand

Painted upon an enamel face
I see the hours that are marked
The hours of ones life
Painted as a work of art

Whose eyes have looked upon you
By whose hands have you been wound
Who brought you to their ear
To hear your beautiful sound

O how I love the music played
So sweet is the watches tick and tock
There is a mystery that I love
In an old pocket watch

I'm going to tell you once,
And I'll probably say it twice.
But I catch you doing that dance,
I'm going to hit you right in the face!

After my first hospitalization I began writing. I signed my name, about five times, proving to the staff and myself that I was ready to be discharged. The envelope held against my chest contained reading material, a diagnosis, and copious sheets of paper with lightly drawn animal sketches. Two weeks in a hospital, sitting at a desk by a caddy-cornered television, holding a styrofoam cup of decaf coffee, I'd sit listening to news stories while skimming through piles of xeroxed copies of coloring books. This became the precursor to many more manic months that would eventually and periodically follow.

Adolescent behavior is uncertain, but a child that runs off into a wooded enclosure to scream until collapse is significantly more uncertain. More often than not, when a child screams, an adult comes running. But when the source of the scream is just as misplaced as the child, it will only become an echo lost to the wind. When feeling lost becomes a constant what else is there to do but draw a map, or in this case, animal sketches.

Have you ever cried hysterically while laughing? Not producing tears from a belly ache caused by momentary elation, but two conflicting emotions? Imagine dowsing yourself in gasoline and running into a burning home to get a drink of water. Picture yourself flying through the air, wind caressing your face, but you can't fly, and right before you hit the ground you only just realized that you jumped. No child can prepare for this, as much as an ignorant parent can help their child clean wounds that will not scab over. Medication will become a bandage, and if the wound can never heal, the bandage will eventually be ripped off.

Art therapy before therapy was introduced was sitting on the bedroom floor, fashioning little cut-out rectangles, hole at the top, and string pulled through and wrapped around my big toe. A blanket pulled over my face, just to know what it was like to rest in peace. But you know, kids will be kids, or so they say.

Aspirations to be an artist should have been the first clue that mental illness had come and was here to stay, but the dreamers of the world ruined that. You start painting happy little trees, and two months later you're medicated in a hospital room with the faintest idea of what a tree even looks like, let alone the fact that because of these unimaginable trees you are able to breath. But you are breathing, and slowly you are able to grasp a pencil, and soon after you are able to draw these trees, these happy little trees that you not so long ago had forgotten about. And you lean your face down, nose touching the sheet of paper, and you inhale. You feel reborn. Not exactly home, because, well, you're not home, but you're comfortable in your new skin. This new skin leads the doctors to explain to you that you are manic. You nod your head, obligatory nodding, seeing as how your mind is elsewhere, many places in fact, thinking of all of the ideas you'd like to put on paper. And soon enough you're signing your name, multiple times, being discharged with your diagnosis. This is your enlightenment you're told. This is the first day of your new life.
But it's not. The cycling wasn't explained. And you failed to read the paperwork given to you that was sealed in the envelope. Instead you tore it open to procure your drawings and discarded the rest of the contents.

Those drawings lead you to college. To be the artist you know you are.
You bleed for your work. Figuratively, at first. Until you decide to find a new medium. You put yourself into your work. Red smeared all over a canvas. Curled up in a ball on the floor, losing blood quickly, eyes slowly closing. And when you wake, with tubes in your arm, and hands secured to a bed, you wonder what season it is. And what the trees look like, whether they are barren or blossoming.
Then you smile.
You smile because you remember what trees are.

If only you could find a pencil.

My heart was beating as i sat and imagined you reading the letter i'd written while i was away, a four page summary of three words that i just couldn't say. i wondered if you wished that i would return, a little older and a little wiser from all that i'd learned. i wondered if you wished that i would stay. i sit, admiring the city lights. it was one of those days, it's turning into one of those nights and i'm wondering if i could come home, do you think that'd be alright? the last words we said are running through my head, "know that i never meant to hurt you", "you may not mean it my dear, but you do". after that, i fled the scene and ever since those words have haunted my dreams. as i lay myself down to sleep, i have no soul for the lord to keep. i left it with you long ago and if i'll ever get it back i'll never know.

I found your old
Wrist watch
Amongst your things;
Strap worn, unstitched,

The face of the watch
Stopped at a given time,
Metal touched with grime.
Don't know when

You wore it last,
But I guess your being
Still tingles along the vibes,
Despite the years gone by.

I wonder if you
Chopped up your day
By it, wonder what hours
You set aside for play,

What for work or sleep?
You're dead now, so that
Information will have to keep,
The hours spent, the moments

Slipped by in the blink
Of a human eye, the ticking
Watch ticking off
The time allotted you,

Your span set out,
The final year
Mapped out maybe,
For none to know or see.

I hold your watch,
Allow the sense of you
To come through
The metal workings,

Silver cast, leather strap;
The sense of you
Pulsing as I wear it
Briefly on my wrist;

The back of the watch
And my skin touching
As if kissed. I will put
The wrist watch away,

In some drawer, for
Another, some day,
But it is you, my son,
That is wanted, that's missed.

... unless it's with me.

Dating you is anti-climatic
And I'd be damned if I ever
Succumb to a part of me
Begging to be cut loose from you.

I don't want to be swallowed by
The euphoria derived from
Vintage pictures and videos;
I know that the saccharine
Comfort will be both
Short-lived and lachrymose.

I don't want to have to
Flip through your new pictures daily,
Searching for remnants of the love we shared
Through the new love you'd then be experiencing.

Usually,
I'd wish nothing but the best
But I want the worse for you.

My mental is too detrimental
To handle you and another.
I don't want to wake up
From constant nightmares
Leaving my stomach tied in knots
You'd only see on TV.

I don't want to sit at family dinners alone
When you were suppose to be there with me.
I don't want to have to look at chocolate desserts
And remember how it's your favorite
So although I detest chocolate,
I eat it anyway to somehow
Suppress the feeling of you not being there.

I don't want to watch you fall in love with another.
You carry a part of me
Every time you're apart from me
And I'd rather you cheat
Than to follow what seems like tradition
And leave.

I don't want to watch you fall in love with another.
I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve
And I'm down on both knees
Pleading please,
Oh please

I don't want to watch you fall in love
... unless it's with me.

Listen to the rain pour.
I mean- listen to the world's roar.
The wind; brash and arrogant.
Unseen forces leave strong trees bent.

*Lightening cracks open a blackened sky,
Rolling thunder follows to say goodbye.

I was told I was everything,
But in the end people consider me as
Worthless,
Useless
As unwanted.

I was told I could be anyone,
Yet everything I consider as me and what I desired
Was destroyed
And hated.

I was told I can follow my dreams.
In the end, the were always broken down by the same person,
Saying, " It is too unrealistic, because
It's just a dream. "

I was told I could love anyone,
But had to give everything I have
Just to get a
Fragment of love.
So love is impossible for me.

I was told to live,
But each day they come to me
Spilling out their hearts.
Yet, when It came to me
I was ignored.
They told me to disappear.

They told me I can do anything and live my life,
Still in the end it was shut down,
As they exclaim, " How? How are you going to do it?
You can't,
You're not rich,
You don't have connections or opportunities.
You can barely take care of yourself. "

Hypocrites, they are.
Worst of all, they are my family and my friends,
But I want them to
Watch me...

Watch me...
As I grow up stronger
From each and every step
Each and every fall and mistake.
In which I learn from.

I want them to watch me
Grow as a leader.
I want them to watch me
To I can become who I truly want to be,
That I long for,
That I dream of.

I want them to watch me,
So I can show them and others that you can't abide
By others words.
That actions are more important.
Your actions define you,
Not your name
Not your past,
Not your class.
It's what you choose to do.

Do you choose to be a follower
For the rest of your life?
Or do you struggle with change
To become a leader?

I want them to watch me...
In my steps
To becoming what I wish and
A leader.