Day 4: Stuck or Unstuck [in time]

Containment Unit # 231

We watch the movie frontwards, stopping
not often for questions & noticing, they would
rather plug in to their own headlessness.
I insist that they remain well postured.
This doesn't please the prisoners, who
don't buy that they are free to come & go:

stuck, unstuck

they renounce my influence: traitor,
liar, thief, hypocrite, warden, bum.
My ticks don't bother them anymore,
they react, only to keep themselves awake.
Even when they smile, their teeth shine
with disdain, or is it just the clock, shine:

stuck, unstuck

big hand catching up with little hand
seconds committing suicide with
a leap less of faith than absolutism,
to keep all the watchers hoping
& guessing that soon even this will pass,
at the top of every hour a pause:

stuck, unstuck

but what of these friends unshackled,
choosers, minds broken open to see
that what matters here matters every
where, that what is true is as uncom
fortable as a poorly engineered desk,
a false ergonomics of education:

stuck, unstuck

We are held here, we two, we many,
an invisible thread, a visible cell white
walled & dingy, speckled with useless
memorabilia, a story soaked wasteland,
unkempt wordhoard, ill used, piling up,
forever unread, only to contain us.

Are we really stuck? Unstuck.