He kept adding “your mom” to every thing I said.

He kept telling these terrible knock-knock jokes.

He kept doing these terrible impersonations.

He kept making these terrible puns.

Finally, after an excrutiatingly long setup, he asked me,

“Tickle your ass with a feather?”

And that’s when I clocked him, Your Honor.

http://poetryassignment.com/2008/12/assignment-clock/

“Fourty-seven, sir.”
Fourty-seven. Fourty-seven.
Fourty-seven more letters
To write.  Fourty-seven more
Official forms, in triplicate.
Fourty-seven more men who
Would never see home again.
The Captain looked at the
Small clock on the table,
Ten minutes past midnight.
There would be no sleep for
Him again tonight.  No sleep
Until the bill was paid.

He reached for his pen, an
Old Mont Blanc that belonged
To his father, an officer in
The Great War.  He had carried
It through Verdun and Ypres where
The souls of thousands of
Young men were trapped within
It’s smooth, black finish.
Like his father, he was a
Keeper of the lists of the
Dead.

He couldn’t help but notice
The pen got heavier and heavier
With every letter.  Mustering every
Ounce of strength he could, he
Lifted the pen and began
To write another chapter in
The Book of the Dead.

For other clock poems, click here.

after nights of discussing books and politics
and drunkenly filling in the clues
of old, half-completed crosswords
from august new york times issues
a full ashtray meant 5 a.m. was near.

a series of car rides, four friends somehow
packing into the backseat
to make a quick run to the gas station on the corner,
afterward the empty bottles accumulating through the night,
the empty packs of marlboro reds retracing the hours

most of us would never have work the next morning;
we did not know the agony of the nine to five
at that time we just skipped classes
and slept at the older kids apartments
until mid-afternoon.

telling time never interested us
carefree, hourfree, minutefree
instead we thought the world was ours
and that it didnt belong to the clock
or the calendar or any of those odd devices

and at times it still seems like we were right,
right all along.
we feel it most at work
as the haze rises from an outdoor ashtray on a five minute cigarette break
and we wish those five minutes lasted as long as our youth.
http://poetryassignment.com/2008/12/assignment-clock/

http://poetryassignment.com/2008/12/assignment-clock/

(My first limerick!)

Then maybe in this one, we might one day
Learn to solve our problems without fighting,
We might educate children (and ourselves),
Might get enough sleep, might wake up refreshed,
And who knows, we might even leave this bar
Together, instead of you fucking off.

Assignment: clock