Michael T. Smith writes

Silly Clock Faces

Imagine a clock face

marked with things besides numbers,

and you may go far in life:

Instead of the number “4,”

its hands might point to “Soon.”

And at the stroke o’ midnight,

We see a disembodied smile,

and down south is that marker of all maturity. 

And as they wind along the set path,

passing “run,” “coup,” and “lee,”

those feeble hands

soon proceed past the empty hole at ten’s old hut.

And so jump follows fall like cause follows effect

                As it winds around in an unwritten story,

                                past “The Middle” where Nine

                                                had before proudly sat,

for the time now is not measured,

                except by the pictographic sun at former five.

And only with this clock in mind,

watch its hands with a beggar’s drool.

Read the expression

On its silly face,

Knowing that time goes nowhere

But in a circle, stuck in its predictable pace.