Buttoned down to the nines

If there isn’t there should be
and if I can’t then I will
even while throwing the same old masters to the walls
and acting as if they were original thoughts.

No criticism cuts like the self
and no emptiness bleeds like a reflection.
These ties stopped keeping time long ago,
while these hands have killed our own.
This numb meaninglessness as a prelude
to complete loneliness
as one by one they leave.

She is left,
and she is fading,
and what did we think would happen to us?
Father, where are we now?
Every street is full of ghosts,
but better ghosts than empty bodies,
clad in the finest imported goods,
spending my hourly wage on one drink,
echoing with the hoots and hollers of an imaginary click.
Morose musings tower over varnished selves,
giving us back to eternity.

-1/28/2019

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