All you need to cheat death
is a broken clock
except when time cheats brokenness
which it always does, manages to be measured
in ripened ashtrays of twice-kissed roaches
and the inexhaustible faceless clamor
pressed pig nosed into the dark windows
of the mind’s closed storefront.
Even the passing of nothing is passing,
the “Did you spring from Zeus’s forehead?”
still stuck to your blushing, burnt tongue
in the empty elevator six months too late.
Summer come, and lo, a brotherless
glove bends apart the spine
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.
You and I know better, know waiting
is like watching the porch light
foolishly flicker for nothing but moths,
drinking pink wine from a cardboard box
while all the others sleep.
Anti-climax is only poor man’s tragedy,
nothing more.