Clock Watching edit1

[billy]

Clock watching

I watched her walk; dragged and halting,
broken backed and bone-bare shinned. i take shinned to me climb (using the shins for leverage) so i'm struggling with the phrase
Her eyes were not aligned to see the sun.
Too bright for life, she shunned its glare
as if the truth of light was just too sure for her.
She, in her shaken world, uncertainty a daily constancy;
tick-tock, the clock times out from need to need
so time becomes a useless, child-play toy.
Her rhythm, hunger synchronised, precision guaranteed,
counts down to certainty. She lives for one but dies for two.
See, in her wake, a gift to many; a child too many,
a binding umbilical and reminder of her best forgotten days.
The child is pale and drawn, sexless by the lack of clues
which clothes by trait bestow upon the infant frame
but more by the androgeny of pre-pubescent, famine present years.
The woman stops and turns, a gesture
meant to indicate that love, somewhere, is there
but wasted on the wasted.
The night is coming to their day. Tick-tock.


tectak
2011

you'll have to forgive me for this but i think it's beautiful, some of the images and lines are fantastic. but, and i think it a big one. there's too much going on. it's hard to do a line by because i'm not sure as to what to remove or leave in order to make it work better. while i know it's about the clock i'm not sure why i know. one solid reference would be an asset. i think the last line almost makes it. (one of those great lines)
it could be me but i needed some pointer to show me who her/she was.