The Clockfools

He pulls the blanket
past his eyes, and over his head.
he recalls the nights
when he slept cozily, curled up in his bed.
he seeks that silence,
he searches for that stillness,
he closes his eyes,
those blood-shot in the battle against sleeplessness.

Into a deep slumber, his mind he tries to thrust,
futile, he twitches and turns,
unable to overcome its state of unrest.
desperate, he sings himself a silent lullaby,
as louder grows the day's bustle,
he hears a school kid shouting "mummy...bye bye".

He is just one of them,
among the many thousands,
the ever growing group of the clockfools.
those who live by the clocks of far off lands,
their own, ticking, not clockwise,
but in what seemed, a clock-fool way.
fooling the sun and the moon,
fooling their own days and nights,
they fool themselves
of the hours dark and bright.

As he lies, still in the quest,
he sees sleep coming, still a little distant,
he thinks about his life, the way
his career seems to have begun, hitting rock bottom.
he hears his father waking up the gods,
busily chanting the venkatesa suprabaatham.