The Clock

[Larry B.]

Tick! Tick! It clicks.
Though we hear its chime,
we do not always heed the silent advice  
that time is running out
for us to paint our little pictures
on the canvas of life.
Let us paint as deftly as we can:
contours designed with vision and worthy aims,
filled with the hues of our talents and creativity,
embellished with the sweat of toiling hands,
and scintillating with the colors of virtues
expressed in virtuous deeds.  
In the unfolding beauty of our creations
we too may find
fulfillment and bliss.

---

Thanks Larry for your comments. As regards your suggestion for re-drafting of the first line, I don't think I am in a position to say anything either way. I would only clarify that it was not my intention to describe a clock or to draw attention to the peculiar sound it makes. The tick, tick of the clock is relevant only to the extent that it carries with it a silent message that time is ticking away fast, and that we should utilize it in the best possible way if we have to fulfill the mission of our lives, and contribute something to the world. The rest of the poem is a development of this idea, and has nothing to do with a clock. If certain words can be substituted by more effective ones, on the lines suggested by you, I think it should definitely be attempted. Your question is: why should the writing be regarded as poetry, and, secondly, to which genre it belongs. The only answer I can give is that the genre is Free Verse. Why should Free Verse be regarded as poetry is something I am not competent to answer. I would have been in a better position to answer your question if you had gone through some of the other poems on this forum, and pointed out which of them conforms to your idea of poetry and why. I did go through the information on  Free Verse as given on the Internet, and the crux was that Free Verse need not have any scheme of either rhyme or meter. I also dug out a sample of Free Verse by a famous poet, Carl Sandburg, and here it is:

FOG
The fog comes on
like cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

I did write this out as a paragraph without the line breaks. It read perfectly.

I'm new to this forum and, really, a novice at writing and critiquing poetry, but I'll give a few comments based on my present awareness. I hope that's OK.
The first line seems to me to end rather abruptly and "jarringly" move to the second line.
What do you think of:
Tick! Tick! It clicks. Tick! Tick!
For me, that puts a pause between the first and second lines and lets one ponder more the presence of the clock.
In line 5, I'd use another word for "little," something a little more elegant, maybe "simple," or another word that you'd be more qualified to choose to suit your aims; "little" seems rather trite to me.
Re: and scintillating with the colors of virtues
      expressed in virtuous deeds.  
"Virtuous" seems a little repetitive to me, and I'd use another word, perhaps "honorable."

One thing I don't understand yet is why this is even a poem. To me, it could be written out in a short paragraph, as prose. In what genre of poetry would you put your creation? What is it about your work that makes it a poem, from your perspective?

Sincerely,
Larry B.

Thanks for your complete, well-thought-out reply, sunilmathur. I'm sorry it has taken me so long to reply, but many unexpected things came up in my life that I had to deal with.

I knew that you weren't talking about a literal clock with a sound of "Tick!" but only the subjective passage of time in one's life ... after I read through the rest of your poem, but the first two lines, taken by themselves, do describe, to me, a literal clock, especially with your choice of the word "hear" in the second line:
Tick! Tick! It clicks.
Though we hear its chime,
we do not always heed the silent advice  
that time is running out
for us to paint our little pictures
on the canvas of life.
And I like how, in the second and third lines, you use the dichotomy between "hear" and "silent" to make clear that you're referring to the passage of time that the literal clock represents.
That's why I suggested using "Tick! Tick! It clicks. Tick! Tick!" in the first line to reinforce the initial concept of a literal clock, and to make more apparent that you're talking about a figurative clock when you get to the word "silent" in the third line.

On rereading your poem, the word "chime" in the second line now bothers me a bit, because, to me, a Tick! doesn't sound like what I think of as a chime (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/chime). Perhaps another word, maybe even a simple word such as "sound," which isn't as specific as "chime," might be effective, to give, for the first six lines:
Tick! Tick! It clicks. Tick! Tick!
Though we hear its sound,
we do not always heed the silent advice  
that time is running out
for us to paint our little pictures
on the canvas of life.

Anyway, these are just suggestions that would appeal to me -- and perhaps me alone -- and not to be taken as criticisms of your work.

Thanks for the information about Free Verse, and I do indeed think that is a "valid" form of poetry. Thanks for your example of the Carl Sandburg poem. Poetry, I guess, is somewhat akin to visual art, in that if someone describes or defines himself as an artist, then whatever kind of painting or drawing he makes is, by default, an art form, possibly unique to him alone. You are definitely right in that I need to become more familiar with other genres of poetry. I think I'm looking for poetry with a little bit more structure than Free Verse, more "rules to conform to," in terms of meter and rhyme, and so forth. I'm going to spend more time looking at the different more-structured poetry forms on this forum.

Thanks again, sunilmathur!

Sincerely,
Larry B.