An Hour

What can you really do in it?

Condense the metaphor further?

Glimpse God beyond the atom?

It isn’t a question. 

It’s an official statement.

So shifts the blurry tattoo.

That tear drop didn’t seem to be going anywhere quickly.

A copper key clutched in your hand,

coat still on, ready to run out the door,

start the car and peel off down route 7

toward the marble quarry.

But the falling, failing temporal 

dish of it keeps arriving;

time keeps arriving, 

time keeps serving itself,

steaming on a huge platter.

Every second is a death: irretrievable, 

gone, made past.

Every second a death one second

and a resurrection the next.

And between each, the split second, and so on and so on,

infinite in its never-wholeness—

The other body behind his body

was whispering 

something obscene.

Now that I have you:

Who do you see when you look at my face?