Dead Time

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

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2016