Dead time
Intervals of many hours, of waiting
time
With a desperate need for
resolution
Endless queues to reach suspicious
clerks
And hard-faced irritable jobsworths
Notes and forms to be filled
and filed
The ticking of endless empty
boxes
By broken-nibbed pens, licked
and grubby pencils
Rough smudges, stains and
crossings-out
Gentle queries evoking
impatient responses
Questions with no answers,
statements taken
Mouths rinsed by endless cups
of tasteless tea
Brown and thin, stewed in squeaky
Styrofoam
Then dried again by cigarettes
that taste of straw
And the dusty smoke of tar and
nicotine
To coat the lungs, to calm the
fraying nerves
A day of yawns and staring at
the floor
Amid the stale atmosphere of
inactivity, thick and clinging
To the labyrinthine structure
of slow-motion procedure
The lost papers and missed
appointments
The elephantine caveats,
interminable details
With no escape from the dark
and gloomy horror
Just the dour and dreary
nightmare
A boredom borrowed from hell
A never-ending ennui, a depth
of tiredness
The unremitting tedium of
waiting, waiting
Hanging about and hanging on
In cobwebbed and dusty
corridors
Of peeling paint and shuttered
doors
Which hide nameless
administrative men
Yet hanging on to the slowly-evaporating
hope of a mite of progress
The becalmed, motionless,
meaningless measurement of time
Watching clocks that do not
move
Their hands surrendered to a standstill
Where seconds, minutes and
hours mean nothing
With nowhere else to go
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