The Strange Hour

[Verse 1]
Twenty clocks on a shelf I built crooked,
One loses an hour, one hoards the noon.
One ticks like a shoe on a stairwell,
one skips whole mornings and calls it a tune.
I used to keep tools by the bedside,
ready to silence the ones that ran strange.
But the walls kept a map of their arguing,
and the room changed shape with the change.

[Pre-Chorus]
I quit asking which hand was right,
let every little wheel take its time.

[Chorus]
Let them go—fast, slow, out of line,
all their crooked seconds can be mine.
When they clash, when they lean, when they rush and unwind,
twenty wrong clocks make a sound I can find.
I’m not a fault to be filed down flat;
I’m the whole strange hour, and I’m keeping that.

[Verse 2]
Some days I’m the clock with the loose brass tooth,
some days the one that forgets to chime.
There’s a future past the shop window—
no single face has to tell me the time.
I’ll carry this racket beyond the doorway,
let tomorrow hear what I couldn’t erase.

[Chorus]
Let them go—fast, slow, out of line,
all their crooked seconds can be mine.
When they clash, when they lean, when they rush and unwind,
twenty wrong clocks make a sound I can find.
I’m not a fault to be filed down flat;
I’m the whole strange hour, and I’m keeping that.

[Outro]
The shelf gives a little.
The morning keeps time.