Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

A Dream I Had When I Was Wide Awake

Illustrated by Sebastian Reardon

Tick tock tick tock, is it a bomb or is it a clock?

Born a long-forgotten forget-me-not

With an electric fence for a heart and a barbed wire brain

Decapitating barbie dolls on the kitchen floor

Or another new toy that I simply can’t wait to destroy

Troubled child, evil child, go play in your room child

Growing up into disputed territory between me, myself and I

Marked with love bites and hate speech

Often spoken of but rarely spoken to

Some days away at the beach but most days at war

With an army led by a self-destructive commander in a silky night gown

Demanding you march into the ocean and never look back

No amount of swimming will keep you from feeling like you’re drowning

One day, you won’t wake yourself up to the ticking of the clock

You will come to the realization that people truly are open-books,

Only written in a dead language

Talking constantly without ever saying much at all

Still under the enforced, mundane delusion that pain is beautiful

Longing for stillness while aching for havoc

Reminiscent of being coaxed by impurities although never acknowledging it

I no longer think I owe this cultural wasteland a repressible form of beauty

Prepare for the silent revolution that is unapologetically losing yourself

Then again how petrifying words can be when nobody is saying anything at all

When you’re stranded in an empty room and yet people are finally talking to you

Yearning not to impulsively fill the silence with my fear of myself

Tick tock tick tock, always the bomb, never the clock