A SLOW, STUPID METRONOME

With decades behind, one still boorishly chases the dull candles

held by those somehow traipsing through the uncomplicated

life; one just an acknowledgment page away from calling it now

one page away from a done. Over it. So very over it

With a brisk rendering of complexity, shrill and shrugged

repeats of days and one is an unparented swiller and one’s tonic and

balm no longer enough. Soon there will be no verb. The countables

wreck their own units; static laughs; lit up and tweak-weary

Diplomacy taints the micropolitic. Countless hours, of course,

spark sluggish decades and one loses games one isn’t even aware of

There is this one thing that all things are made of, one says

and the dull-witted say yes, this. One does not, should not. Still rhetoric eases

The peculiar sting of fact-unchecked quirk factor hymnals and yet, one

chases slow moving candles and one fattens and withers in season –

slow metronome. A slow, stupid metronome. Then, at some point,

there is no real verb but an unrelenting need to call it and to call it

in time, listlessly, to call one’s own over it