Hello, reader. How are you doing? Fortunate to be on the free side of a locked door? Or maybe you own the door and own a key. Ming and I are traveling. The vacation rental where we’re staying at has an analog clock, and its second hand ticks above the desk where I’m writing. So I’ve been thinking about this clock meme.
Ming is asleep. You know me, bothered by an idea until I get up to write the poem.
The clock meme breaks my heart. I’ve spent a long time studying it, like the crazy person I am.
sample drawings indicating participants with severe, extremely treatment-resistant schizophrenia show a variety of deficits in the clock-drawing test
I look for myself in the drawings.
They’re like the reflection in a large slotted spoon,
trees moving in the wind,
sunlight on the surface of the water.
You are like me.
Your inaccuracies teach me what a clock is:
numbers bunched up to one side,
many arrows pointing within a circle,
part of a word, a medicine wheel.
This drawing is prayer.
Evil decided you belong for decades
confined in a hospital.
It’s not a deficit to notice
a clock can look like a gumball machine.
It’s a deficit to imprison another person.
You know something about time.
Standard intelligence made a world
where destroying Parent Earth for money is normal.
You are the only one
who can lead us out.
prayer
Holy Mother, Mother of God, please bless us and touch the hearts of people with power who are afraid of difference. Please give us the tools and skills to love one another and support each other through all our differences and needs.
Please help us protect children and all vulnerable people from violence. Thank you for our good hearts which want freedom for ourselves and for all beings.
Please bless us to fight for justice and be who we are. Please protect us from violence including imprisonment. Thank you for art and for all the ways we can express reality. Please help us be respected, and please help us treat all beings with respect. We love you always.
