Watch

Keeping a watch on things that move on the face of a clock after the mice have all run away with electronic clicks powered by thin pencil-torch cells touched on by tips of tongues to check if there is life in this world or in other worlds that are far away out of sight if not here, there or there else picking mangoes from trees by the sides of the roads (on which walk lions and giraffes) and eating them directly one bite at a time keeping count with tally bars drawn on the flat faces of rocks hard to the touch gathering mineral sweat in sunlight that roasts and boils the calcium and promises out of the souls of the rocks that are mere lumps of butter with names of cows written on them melting, melting, melting in the ultra-violet-ness and the ultra-violent-ness of the cruel noon shade of today that pledged to be the prince of all other days of this month and paupers pick wicks from lamps that glow when the sun has set or disappeared or gone away from prying eyes that stare, stare, stare at it all day long and even it doesn’t want to glow gentle into the crude night of May or maybe not if you are to ask a forgotten book with a good story or a good book with a forgotten story in the middle or at the end of a line that is not this line for want of a horseshoe the battle was lost they say and nobody knows whose words are worthy of their belief