It

Sleep is innocent.

It runs, hides in the dark,

is easily frightened by radiators,

the drop of a digital clock.

I have access no longer

to the lull of manifold sheep.

Time zones are corrupted

with a single cunning sock.

Night spins uncountable hours

in a game of blindfold;

I hear your voice in my head,

misidentify your face on purpose,

wanting always to be it.

tk/December 2014

Deliciously soporific R.A.D. Stainforth...

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Regular Melancholy

There must be something

other than ringtones.

I need freedom with a heavy clapper.

The steeple in my road is silent.

You show me a cathedral with a crown,

tell me about the chimes.

A flat, E flat, A flat, C.  Ascending.

I find the notes on the piano,

imagine the clang of hours.  A clock,

not yet time.  Pick my thumbnail

like a dewclaw.  Crave

a farm bell, a cowbell.  Anything
but this incessant death knell. 

tk/September 2014 

Another elegant read by the dashing R.A.D. Stainforth... 

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The Morn's Night

An hour ago,

I was a child of fables,

pokeweed.

A tongue roller,

chewer of grass―

I could graft an oak from a twig.

Meanwhile, it's another o'clock;

acorns drop from grown trees.

The moon bellows baritone;

omits the chorus,

replaces it with zees.

Vitruvian sweetness finds me,

springing spreadeagle―

wheel of honeysuckle.

I forget sleep;

shake out the pillowcase,

wrap it around my head

for a babushka―

sound a klaxon,

hail a hackney carriage.

Get to Falkirk.

tk/June 2014


R.A.D. Stainforth adds a bit of magic... 

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*A Game of Patience, 1937 by Meredith Frampton 

Explicit Cake

Progression of days playing

in a constant loop,

a marriage of minds.

The loop is safe;

just what we take,

walking all that is left.

Time hangs in the air.

Oceans dry up.

Paths wind in sentences,

give rabbits chase,

willow to climb.

Curves follow a mutual train,

pause for picnic lunch,

explicit cake.

Done with doing, I wait

for the loop to be installed

permanently; with no way out,

a cul-de-sac. 

tk/June 2014


Scrumptious read by R.A.D. Stainforth...glass of wine with lunch...

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Metronomic

Each of your days

is composed in equal measures.

You breathe, eat, sleep, a musical score;

bars of hours, notations of moments.

Everything clicked and clacked

in reductionist order;

a natural metronome

I've never seen in anyone else.

You modulate discord,

anything that qualifies as static,

with the harmony of seconds

continually playing in your head.

Clocks tick in every room

a steady andante of sixty tocks per minute;

a perfect tempo for the slow movement

of Beethoven Seven.

tk/October 2013

R.A.D. Stainforth reads between the ticking of clocks... 

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Take Your Time

R.A.D. Stainforth...in living color...

There is a place,

galactic and unforeseen,

removed from space,

like a ticking clock.

Remote, synchronized

as Shostakovich,

we bludgeon in unison,

followed by only one tock.

Unrestrained measures

surge out of time,

the world suspended

in each sweet stanza.

tk/August 2012

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image: Big Room, 1948, Andrew Wyeth

Infinity

Somewhere along the line,

the big zero of time

was twisted at the waist,

to become an eight.

An hourglass of days,

slipping slow from the top,

then fast below the belt.

Is it providence,

or a lemniscate of fate?

I like to think of myself as verb

and not as object; chop-chop.

I wait the hours;

I empty my head of winter.

I am frightened  

by other people’s fears,

but not of the eight,

an hourglass of days.

tk/September, 2010


R.A.D. Stainforth contemplates...

* Figure Eight, 1952, by Franz Kline