Inside the mind, trouble swells Next tick of the clock brings it nearer to the people seated at the table Eating food that has been prepared Rushing the meal, chasing time Cod on the menu, bone warning Evening meal under moonlight People take their chances There is something bigger than time hidden between the fabric of space Overshadowed by unknown forces Rain, black as night covers the street Souls ancient, dance between the shadows… ©AnitaDawes2022
#Time
Dancing to the Tune of Time… #Poetry

I dance to the tune of time A soundless beat A marionette caught in a web The puppet master fled Time passes through droplets of rain Caught beside me on silken thread Kings come and go I hang, my strings decaying Time cuts my thread on life I fall as matchwood A puppet no more… ©AnitaDawes2022
Colleen’s Weekly Challenge… #Poetry

#TANKATUESDAY Weekly #POETRY CHALLENGE NO. 261, 2/15/22 #PHOTOPROMPT

Time held in twisting fate life in waiting spellbound, ticking slow my screaming soul searching for time to turn itself back let the door open, take the leap find that fast ticking clock, steal the key I control time, now I stand on mountains… ©AnitaDawes2022
Returning Time… #Poetry
A slip in time…

“What’s your name,” I ask the old man, sitting on the park bench feeding the pigeons. I liked the look of him. Small, with a slight hunched back, snow white hair and the beginnings of a beard.
“My name, do I have a name?”
“Everything has a name.” My reply did not fuel the conversation. Something about the way he moved his hands, the way the small bag of seed did not empty, the way the trees around us held their breath. The silence and the sharp pain at the back of my head, stirring, waking something in me.
“You are Merlin.”
“Am I?” His blue eyes sparkled with the mischief of a five-year-old child. “Yes, you could be right. My memory is not as it should be these days. I have little to offer you, young man. You are wondering who you are.”
“Not true, I know who I am.”
“Do you know when you are?”
“Yes, I am here, in the park, talking to you.”
“Look around you, do you see what lies before your eyes?”
I looked and the trees parted, like an ancient curtain being pulled aside. Wondering if I had named him wrong. Could he be Moses with no sea to part? He split the trees. I saw a castle, dark jagged rocks surrounded by vast ocean. I look again at the old man. I could see a tear in his eye, the smell of apples filling the air.
He vanished. The air had taken him. It looked for all the world as if I sat there, talking to myself.
I cried out, “Merlin, where are you?”
Rushing through the trees, calling again, I heard his voice.
“Here I am, look again…”
© anita dawes 2020
Time… #Poetry
Time
I remember when I had wings
Before Earth became my home
When days were young
I had not yet leaned that time is my enemy
A parasite, my own personal stalker
Stealing moments of my life
Memories slipping away
Turning my steps slower
Empty space in mind
Filled with strange thoughts
That do not belong to me.
I feel I have twinned with another mind
Maybe one day, they might tell me who they are
I have learned many things in my latter years
That I never thought to put to mind
Mind, like an empty room
Has space for so much more
Why did I not know this when I was young
When time was still on my side?
I feel like a greedy child
There is never enough of the things you like
The heart and mind, wanting more
Wandering from place to place
Still looking for that special something
That eureka moment
that tells you nothing really matters
All thoughts turn to dust
Only the moment holds the charm of life…
© Anita Dawes 2021
‘Fiction In A Flash Challenge 2021.’ Week #42 #IARTG #FlashFiction #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompts

Time to turn the clock back, stealing time from us.
That’s what the ticking clock does, a slow-moving thief.
First you wonder where your youth disappeared to
Then middle age brings on the moody moments too often.
Old age, God bless us.
No one warned us how hard for some of us it could be.
Aches and pains in places you never heard of in your youth.
I can hear those lucky ones, fit in mind and body,
Saying life is good. Well, bully for you
Not all of us are as lucky…
© Anita Dawes 2021
Flash Fiction Challenge for Carrot Ranch Literary Community ~ #Poetry

November 5: Flash Fiction Challenge

November 5, 2020, prompt:
In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story about lost time.

Humans would call me a bad fairy
They don’t know much about my world
I am known as a Too Tak
I need to steal time
In order to feed the hunger inside
Without this, my kind don’t live long
Let’s face it, humans get plenty of time
To lose a little won’t hurt
Half an hour here and hour there
What harm can it do?
They think the clocks are wrong
Running slow or fast
They blame the time loss on bad memory
When my time is done
They get the borrowed time back
As a lost memory…
©anitadawes 2020
Time Again… #Poetry


Time Again
Why do you go where I cannot follow?
Must I travel this dusty road alone?
Why must I live in the eye of the storm without you
where silence beats in time with my heart.
Could I wake one morning where time has reversed
To find you lying beside me
Ready to travel the road again…
©anitadawes 2020
Worth Waiting For…

Worth Waiting for
I fell asleep in my own bed, woke in another
Spent the night with a beautiful woman
Too soon, I found myself back in my own bed
Hugging air, wishing there were a way
to make the dream world a reality in my own time.
Realising this would take more
than the magic wand of Merlin to accomplish
My footsteps became heavy, my day dull.
The voice in the back of my head
A tormenting whisper, telling me
There is a way to stay beside her
That is when I remembered the date
of the newspaper on the side table,
two years from now, I will meet my future wife.
All I need now, is a way to speed time forward…
©anitadawes 2020