Clockwork (I)
Clicking, whirring, grinding, thrumming.
The mass of clockwork dominates the sky; I can't see past it.
The teeth of the polished gears are cut with a razor edge; fitted together with such force that a careless touch would result in dismembrance.
Flywheels spin, storing energy beyond my capacity to guess; it spins faster and faster until it slows to a stop and begins to rotate in reverse.
I cannot stop it.
I cannot satisfy it.
It spins and spins and spins and spins, restless, demanding, impatient, filling me with an anxious power, urging me to work, to move, not in words but in a silent, oppressive glare, as though leaning down upon me, its weight growing greater and greater and greater and greater with each second of inaction.
And yet, nothing sates it.
Filled with limitless power but driven to expend it all, I'm pushed to solve problems of ever greater complexity and with ever more nebulous constraints, to build monuments, build them bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, rivaling palaces then skyscrapers then mountains then planets.
The further I advance, the faster the machinery spins, making me more powerful but forcing my ambition upward; it towers far up into the sky, dwarfing even the most colossal of my achievements, but eternally dwarfed in turn by the tumorous, ceaseless clockwork.