Galileo

I thought I could stop

time by taking apart

the clock. Minute hand. Hour hand.

Nothing can keep. Nothing

is kept. Only kept track of. I felt

passing seconds

accumulate like dead calves

in a thunderstorm

of the mind no longer a mind

but a page torn

from the dictionary with the definition of self

effaced. I couldn’t face it: the world moving

on as if nothing happened.

Everyone I knew got up. Got dressed.

Went to work. Went home.

There were parties. Ecstasy.

Hennessy. Dancing

around each other. Bluntness. Blunts

rolled to keep

thought after thought

from roiling

like wind across water—

coercing shapelessness into shape.

I put on my best face.

I was glamour. I was grammar.

Yet my best couldn’t best my beast.

I, too, had been taken apart.

I didn’t want to be

fixed. I wanted everything dismantled and useless

like me. Case. Wheel. Hands. Dial. Face.