Watchmaker

It has come up again and again

In my list of strange phobias and fears

That I am terrified

Terrified

Of clockwork

There is this Steampunk notion

Of dirigibles in the sky

And Rube Goldberg mechanisms

That run living servants

That drives me to screaming delirium

It always brings to mind images for me

That doctors are liars

It is all special effects

We have no blood or beating hearts

We are filled with shining metal gears

We tick and whir and wind

As I thought about this

It occurred to me that perhaps

What I really fear is perfection

This idea that maybe God

Really is a watchmaker

In a very literal sense

And we are merely bits

Of tiny, working, perfection

My childhood was held together with

Twine and foolish optimism

And now the more I look around

I see that we try to sterilize the world

We bleach it white and perfect

We make it so

That nothing can besmirch what we believe in

That hurts me

Give me a dirty room

An unmade bed

Give me a wrinkled shirt

Show me illegible hand writing

And let me believe

That we are flawed

Let me know that the darkness

Has not been cleansed with antiseptic hand gel

I can’t stand the thought that my beautiful shades

Of grey would be turned

To something so ugly

As false white

If God is a watchmaker

If we are nothing but gears

Tell me that some of us run

A couple of seconds too quickly

Some of us are missing parts

And they cannot be replaced

With the newest factory model