apparatus

This is the broken record. This is the busted clock, right twice and preaching to the time. The floor is strewn with the remains of the altercation, the unwound fob in slow release, the spring talking down the tension. Light and dust pay shiftless witness, prophecy and process holding hands at the intersection. All this time taken winding down.

Throw the bones, read the leaves, toss your fortune to the stars. Live garbage day to garbage day. You are the reason set to rhyme, you are the rattling of the cans, the timepiece automaton set to sort and strew. The shadow whirls around the needle, the scrying of the fire, the tongue of smoke and breath. The machine every piece that turns out a part.

Offer up and get a clue about tomorrow. Wait it out and the puzzle’s about the same. It is this persistence towards the perpetuity, the pendulum of the palindrome. The shell brims with irrelevance, nameless and unneeded. These reachings in the dark, the heartbeat, the endless ticking. Crows start a ruckus in the fallen leaves. The pail fills, blood and broken crowns. The skull brims over and the words spill out. One thing leads to another, then another and so on until it all comes to nothing, and something like it starts again.