Chewing With Grit Under Your Teeth Poem by Margaret Alice

All the seconds of the minutes
of my day – all the non-existent
moments of quantum physics -
filtered away, empty, unused,
unopened, lost

I could not get my thoughts flowing
beyond the jammed circuits in my
head, my short-circuiting mind
doomed every attempt at
coherent thought

Lack of focus and a specific purpose
allowed the package of this day to
spin away in a different lane down
the trousers of time; tonight I paged
through the Time Magazine

Speaking in the coldest, driest inhuman
voice; giving a cynical perspective on
events in America and disadvantaged
Third World countries; the Time is
never complete

Without a dramatic photo and a dire article
on famine in Ethiopia or a big, strong, war in
the East; doubting everything to do with
metaphysics; reading the Time is like
chewing with grit under your teeth

Shattering illusions is their favourite pastime -
since that cold, harsh voice doesn’t interest me
at all, another part of this fruitless day lost...