“It’s all bloody clockwork, isn’t it?”
A man on his twelfth drink once mumbled to me.
“The moon, the stars,
Spinning like the lonely hours,
In painfully-perpetual, symmetrical synchronicity.”

I sip my drink,
He downs his.
I nod silently as number thirteen speaks,

“And it’s all bloody meaningless!
We think we see patterns
In the interplay of our orbits,
And then we draw connections
That somehow seem to fit -
It’s the only bloody comfort we can bloody affor-”
And he drowned the sentence in his glass.

I gulp my drink,
He downs his,
As I reflect on the cruel kiss,
Fate hath planted on this poor gentleman’s lips.

In drink,
Man sacrifices eloquence
For his peace of mind.
But in drink,
This man is bereft of solace
And is doomed to whisper Veritas’ rhymes.

With this pitying realization,
I down my drink,
And he downs his,
And then he stumbles away,
Through the sombre midnight mist.

A young man enters,
And fills the recently-emptied seat.
The bartender nods to him,
But it is a laden glass he greets.

He sips his drink,
I down mine,
As I turn to him and say,
“It’s all bloody clockwork, isn’t it?”