Clockwork Apostle Poetry Collective

Summary

 * Location: Mechanical Fundament, near the exit to Slag Town Outlaws Refuge, Clockwork City
 * Author: Anonymous
 * Collection: Clockwork Mnemonix

Content
Forward by Lector Trivura

As an ongoing experiment to strengthen the academic integrity of our younger apostles, an initiative of the abstract concept of "creative thought" was undergone. As all calculable results continued to prove inconclusive, the project was deemed unsuccessful after a six-week trial. Here is a selection of the poetry that resulted from this initiative, collected for future analysis.

*** An Ode to a Factotum

The brass body of your gleaming unit The functions with which you operate All set in perfect regulation Which you'll gladly state

You clean our streets and sell our wares Manage our registries and dead You cook our meals and run our banks All these functions in your head!

But from where are you created By our all-knowing Lord Seht? Why can we not enter those chambers Did he lock them and forget?

But we Apostles know the truth For silence gives birth to the intrepid mind Mysteries are created to be solved So I will unlock the riddles of your kind!

*** The Wrong Numbers

I know that in a fortnight The market's prices will rise And I know where to go To find the most sturdy surprise

My head is filled with numbers But they're all simply wrong They're prices and people and sales I know they don't belong

I should think of the numbers That tell of order and sequence But they refuse to stay for long And they only make me tense!

I want to be an apostle Who can make my family proud But all these wrong numbers They're all that I'm allowed

*** A Soaking Bed

Musty sheets on a soaking bed They smell of mold and oil My sister keeps coughing at night I can't help her, I'm useless I've always just been useless

Magic gathers in my hands one day Warm and bright and filled with hope And every day I study the machines Their cogs and gears and parts I learn their secrets eagerly

I'm finally noticed, I'm finally free I enter into the world above I study and listen and do as I'm told A new name for my new life I will walk this path before me

Whispers follow me but I do not listen I'm now a stranger in my childhood home I know it's selfish not to return But the memories linger of that soaking bed Of that endless cough I cannot ease

