infinity

i stare at the walls for hours on end
and dream about a time when
this box felt like home
and this chipped paint looked like something
other than a reflection of the fist-shaped
holes in my heart from nights
where ****** knuckles were the only
security blankets familiar enough to cradle
against me all night long

the clock keeps ticking,
all day and all night,
like the hands on the glass
that measure the feeble idea of some
meaningless notion from a corpse now
rotting in the same earth he dared to
test the limits of
actually means something
in the big picture

but in the aerial view,
the hands on the clock are all
snapped in two

because *time can't save anybody
from vituperative parents;
from profligate neighbors;
from the entire volatile essence of humanity

time does not, in fact,
heal a broken heart,
or toss aside the muddy rug
with footprints of those who whispered
"i love you"
into the pillow case but never
came back in the morning

time can't protect anyone
from even the most unholy
truth of all:
there is no rapture on the brink
of delivery,
there is no antichrist plotting
a resurrection of hell,
there is no divinity coming
to save you from the darkness
inevitably forcing its way
into this world

people are destroying each other
because humanity is flawed
and no amount of time can
ever find the piece of the puzzle
that would sync us all together in
a symphony of lives untouched by the
execrable blood pumping in the veins
of this earth like a poison

time can't save you from yourself

and so maybe, the hands
on this clock are better off
broken.


*m.k.