Melting Clocks
by Odin Roark

Alone in the dark.

An ice strewn Austrian tundra
beats your picket-fenced white house,
says who,
whispers she,
says me,
bellows he.

And so it goes,
those endless dream nights atop the pillow,
when melting clocks
invade pages of pinned butterflies.

Up there beneath dusty cobweb corners
where shiny Buster Brown shoes of yesteryear
succumb to an attic-baked cracking of today,
trapped memories hold vigil over
open cigar boxes of prized decoder rings
and crystal radio intrigues.

The latest then.
The oldest now.

A Jack Armstrong comic book
astride the beloved Lionel train tracks,
now but a figure eight,
absent cars,
absent pipe cleaner passengers,
lamenting exotic travel
across Erector Set bridges,
past Log Cabin stations,
through paper mache tunnels,
and wide vistas of painted rock sunsets.

Still oohing.
Still aahing.

Once again sitting here now,
eyeball to eyeball
while my memory-laden hand roams
beneath our table’s checkered cloth,
I smile.
You giggle.

My other liver-splotched hand
grips my Paris souvenir glass,
half empty of caramel colored dream juice,
compliments Tennessee’s bottled black and white genie.


All the while,
my mouth gapes at the ready,
as your manicured slender fingers
seductively tease with
tonight’s forked pieces of steak,
while remnant sounds of Pratt and Whitney
hum from your lips.

Red Barron’s brazen loops on high
meet my persuasive climbs from below,
the rat tat tat tat of 50 millimeter pleasure
making smoked trails behind once more
as I chew yet another memory
to feed my insatiable slavery of swallows.

Alone in the dark.

Through gauze filtered journeys
we visit our attic wastelands,
those fate determined canvases
not yet dry of oils.

The satiate of YES, whispers she.
The voracious appetite of FOREVER, bellows he.

Melting clocks…
still ticking.