The hands of the clock are two jail wardens and a leashed dog,
circling their perimeter, keeping me caged.

A crack in a wooden table. The bottles are long empty,
the worms are weightless,
my vices have saved at least one collapse
tonight.     I turn to her,

and she is framed
in Chinese black plastic,
and feeding injured animals,
without her knowing we are watching,
so we know it's ok
to love her.

I stub a cigarette out
in the dark and
kill her with a red button and
dream of a judgment day
that involves compassion
and mirrors and snow.

But the sudden leaving of her framed light gives only
a lost blackness looking
for a lost soul to leech. Tick-Tock,

the wardens circle
and I pray to someone,
that outside this room things are changing
in a way that I can maybe tolerate,
come sun-up.


The pantry holds another bottle,
another weightless worm,

but tonight,

I think I'll time my pleasures,
so they peak
at the end of the world.