Soldier

Great is the darkness between
That place where the gaps flow smooth
Reaching out to one another
Never quite to touch

Out pours that viscous liquid
Thick with the flows of the ticking clock
Straining to catch the second
In its spinning teeth

Round pools the warmth
Curling at the finger joints
To spew into a sandy maw
As wide as any I've ever known

Long beats the chest straining
To keep each gap from swallowing
Drinking each tick down, down
With a fat, slow, hungering tongue

Sealed are the eyelids
Resigned like gutters to the pavement
Holding the end in shutter-tight
But it stutters in uncaring

In the light greater than any darks
It singes away the shadow's hairs
And leaves... nothing
To drip, congeal, set
Into the final inscription of what was
But has now slipped through desperate fingers
And drunk the dry desert wind.