Clockwork

by Phil Lane

Awake from fever dreams
to woodpecker’s rote
hammering the dawn
into metallic strips of sun
that pulse through neon
wave machines,

the obdurate world
turns like clockwork,
my mind is empty adspace,
a mansion to fill
with everything I don’t need,

the judgmental sun
studies my habits, glints
over these sticks of furniture,
these threads of information
that form a crude bower
in which I carry out
my synthetic purposefulness—