All you need to cheat death
is a broken clock

except when time cheats brokenness
(which it always does, managing to be measured
in ripened ashtrays of red rimmed rollies
and patently forgettable introductions,
faceless clamor
like an infallible parade of winkers,
pressing pig nosed into the dark windows
of the mind’s closed storefront…)

But even the passing of nothing is still passing,
the “Did you spring from Zeus’s forehead?”
still stuck to your blushy, burnt tongue
in the empty elevator six months too late,
summer come and a brotherless
glove lonely and tucked in the pages
of Sons and Lovers, still unread -
but the black print imagines the shape
of fingers where there are not fingers
might somehow still touch tenderly.

Waiting is like watching the motion censor porch light
flicker foolishly for nothing but moths.
The only alcohol left around is pink wine in a box,
and the others are all sleeping.

It’s just you, me, and the moths now, time.
What are you gonna do about it?