RHYME Poem: WatchBox, by Lance Flowers

My first fight felt like rebirth.
Dying time and time again.
Seconds, minutes, minutes, seconds,
Chopped by hour hands.

Time lost its pattern,
And forgot it’s rhythm.
The sapphire cyclops rattled,
No longer indifferent.

Alarmed and unwilling
to hold time together neat.
It was wrestling with its inner core.
It was just like me.

Prying at the balance wheel,
Pressuring gears from within,
Unraveling the mainspring,
Unable to conform or pretend.

Parrying ghostly shadows,
I winced then gave a grin.
First I prayed to make it out alive,
Now dying for the win.

I saw it happen all at once.
Every advance closer to the grave.
Lessons in impermanence.
Nothing will be saved.

The bell and ropes a tethered trope
more like ball and chain.
Will I make out alive?
Maybe, But that’s not why we came.

Fight to live or fight and die?
A paradox, To time all the same.
A brave man can’t be erased.
A coward can’t be changed.

We only have so little time,
But that’s the object of the game.
Remembered beyond space and time,
The only worthwhile for the pain.