14 minutes

the clock has begun ticking and in 14 minutes this
piece will be over with you and i if we both decide
to accept it have begun on something of a journey
together one in which the both of us should most
assuredly gain and lose such is the moral of the
story that only our forefathers who built themselves
on lying and thievery amidst the subtle guise of
religious piety and political idolatry could handle
throwing it off their table like the scrapping
remnants of a meal well-had by a family whose dog
has sat there staring at them persistently and
without any sense of shame whatsoever biding his
time and no doubt in this hot weather sweating
bullets underneath his thick coat of fluffy yellow
lab meets some other kind of fluffier dog mutt
extravaganza the fact remains that the writer got up
too early today from what can only be considered
as a partial rest and while they are quite conscious
of the fact that there are those out there that do not
get nearly as much rest or even quite possibly
no rest at all in a day this does not in any way quiet
the writer’s own mind from mumbling to themselves
why can’t we go back to sleep why must we stay
up and stare at this screen batting away in this
batting cage with no special purpose holding through
each swing as the balls come flying at us and
we are barely awake the sleepy stuff buried in the
little corner crevices of our eyes still cementing our
vision shut and we tilt our head from side to side as
the pain in the neck shoots up the back of our head
curling itself round the bottoms of the hair
follicles that stick up in shivery amounts dwindling
down the roller coaster of a forehead and typifying
itself at the downward slope of the nose writhing in
the air as it coasts off and into the abyss which can’t
be anything less than the beautifully exciting finish
of the 14 and as we revel in the last few seconds we
hear the bed calling us back and who but a fool
can resist the gift of a little extra sleep.