Midnight.
The minute hand clicks to the right,
underscores the hour.
Outside second story tenement,
a car passes through puddles,
beams of light passing over bedroom walls, ceiling.
The tick tock of the clock.
The scratching of the mice.
3 am.
Guns snap in the alley,
there are moans.
Quietly close, and lock the window.
Grip a bat.
The scratching of the mice again.
Sunrise
Women crying below window.
Mice have eaten through the cereal box.
Spoiled yogurt, an old banana.
These faces on the bus.
Lesions oozing wet, cancerous puss.
Noon.
Lines to the lunch truck.
Theme-park food truck, meat in a bun.
Tick tock.
The scratching of fingers on keys.
3 pm.
Gripping bat.
Tick tock.
Screams in the halls.
Walls painted red.
Writer Moe 
my favorite is the rhyme of “bus” and “puss” – two images that sadly seem to go together. The poem seems to revolve around the clock, but really it’s about how certain images dominate consciousness. It’s really about that domination.
http://hobdsmusings.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-i-went-for-hike.html
Chris – Thanks, like how you see this. One of the movements that’s fascinated me for a long time is Imagism, and this was in that vein. Sort of. I’m trying to project clear images, while casting shadows on the walls of the cave. The bus/ puss line was fun, and a nod to Pound’s great Imagist poem:
“In a Station of the Metro”
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
For a man with a cynical eye to humanity, this was a surprise, to me. A poem about gorgeous faces in a Parisian train station. I just… updated the lines. To what we’ve become.
A link to this poem can now be found at ‘edge of frog’
http://edgeoffrog.wordpress.com/