Weiran Liu Assignment 2

Round-the-Clock 
Wake up, get ready, only minutes to spare.
Pack up, head out, everything is there.

Roll out, get dressed, only moments to waste.
Homework, study, all in a haste.

Stumble, collect, for time I lust
Assignments, papers, work, sports and clubs
Crawling back, diminished to dust.

Exhaustion bears on my back
Like Atlas, a second I cannot slack.
A lightning break relieves my soul,
Filled with friends and company who make me whole.

Moments so cherished, moments so sweet
The cycle continues until  its complete.

     The tone intended in this poem is a rushed, but tired one. The structure within the sentences is short and choppy in order to convey a sense of hurry. Furthermore, diction such as "minutes," "spare," "moments," "haste," "lightning break," and "seconds" all portray a lack of time to reinforce this idea. The tired aspect stems from imagery used to describe the state of my well-being at the end of the day. "Diminished to dust," connects myself to an object that simply floats and hangs in the air, thus showing the lack of energy I am left with. Alluding to Atlas, I was able to link his never-ending burden of him carrying the world and the weight of that task to my nonstop workload and its implications on me. In combination, the above mentioned devices create a tone of a speaker who is exhausted, but is in a hurry, constantly moving and doing.