by Benjamin Miller

Created on: November 01, 2008

The hands of a clock

"Here lies the body of an angel," the stone man began, but all the lovers turned to mud. She was what made them gold.

"There is no sky today," one onlooker remarked with quiet gray eyes.

"There is nothing to see," a vague notion responded.

This is a sad tick indeed, but the clock dares not stop. You see that clock made of rotted trees, needs it oily carrots, so all the sparks keep at it. Unaware the hands move in a circle. They weep for that angel, but only tears of gold. What good is that in a place of raw mortality? That is why the angel weeps back.

All the mourners fly and crawl away, no longer able to be mud. After all it's just not practical. Our great eye follows one, whose rocked heart remains dirt. He steps in tune to a beat only he can hear. The road responds with calm gestures towards reality. He does not follow. He is lost at home. That angel was the hand he held. Now he swims only to swallow. "Swallow what," you may ask. No one ever told him. Now he limps and is blamed for it.

As his limp becomes his waltz a bird he knew a minute ago calls. "Sir, you are my brother, why be afraid of the final hour?"

"I am afraid, because the clock is not mine," he looks down and he looks up, he is a shadow, he forgot. Shadows cannot see. Now he had a place to go. They screamed its name as nowhere. The map was in his tears. They were inky with truth and memory. They were no longer whole, they were the only true fraction he knew how to spell. A hole of a different sort.

He fell in unable to avoid it. He felt the air play tricks on the wind as deeper down he passed. Suddenly the smell of lies became a taste upon his hand. He became enraged for no more reason than to be. He smashed the sacred nothingness. Suddenly it yelled back.

"How dare you weep you rich fool," with all the contempt of a dying man.

"I have no rhymes for the judging mirror, when all I seek is to be" the shadow cried back with spite enough to bleed a rainbow dry.

Then thunder came between the stare of stars on either side. The shadow slipped by repenting his anger. He knew it was merely delusion. He sought the sanctuary of hysteria, but his war was raging now. Swept away in consequence he began to sing a song he did not know:

Away with smiling clouds

Paid for in sworn hearts

Damn all that be true

It's just a mockery of a lie

On he went set in his lack of air. Starving the very earth of any chance at glee. He was happy in a new twisted way, because it was all he had. The nothingness was long gone now, killed perhaps replaced by self serving kings.

"You're at our table now," they laughed.

For the first time the shadow began to bleed. Not by his own blade, but by his soul's choice. That blood would wake him from his drunken death. Born anew he sought the counsel of a rock, who said but one thing

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