Mr Fong's Itchen

Tick Tick Drip
Ring Run Faster More Back
Tick Drip Boring Coloured Madness
Drip Drip Ran out Can’t fix Follow
Tick Tick Time
Life’s engine Digital body
Spinning endless
Around its silver clock face
Round and round and round and round
Implanting its very own rhythm
In pulsing veins
Complimentary with the gift of life
Remember how proud
The first watch around the wrist
Escaping Too dangerous
Having to find your own measure
of
what?


Tick Drip Stop Red Wait
Missing The complimentary patience
For all the waiting Of time to pass
Tick Tick Drip Orange Green
Move Faster Racing for seconds
Flowing neon colours brainwashed pink
Dancing leaflets Selling time
Lose your weight in two weeks
Access your money 24 hours
Get to Paris in one hour
Change your future in one day

Tick Tick Traffic jam Waiting Moaning Missing train
Too late for meeting
Passing Mr Fong’s itchen
Chinese restaurant and take away
The K is missing ever since
Tick Tick Drip Murmur
Ten to two
Big and round and silvery
Outside the entrance door
Does time get old
And wrinkles too
Clock clock
In granny’s kitchen
End of lesson
Tick Tick Ring Drip Drip Clock
Ten to two Ten to two Ten to two Ten to two
All day All night

Time has lost its willpower
In Mr Fong’s place
He says
He does not owe time
Anymore
Perhaps he never did
Is that why he does not
Repair his clock
Why should he repair a clock
Without the time in it
In fact A while ago
He sold his time
To impatience
Tick Tick Drip Tick
A moment meant eternity
For a customer who was
Trapped In his fear of time
No time to wait around
For sweet and sour bamboo shoots
Tick Tick Stop Drip Tick
Run Go Faster Spin
So Mr Fong had said
I give you mine
If yours is not enough
He took it all
At ten to two
Not leaving behind
Only half a minute
When once he came
And tried to sell it back
To Mr Fong
He said
Time got too expensive now
I can’t afford to have it anymore

SP 2001 performed at readings in Covent Garden Poetry Club (London) & Cafe Kafka (Vienna)