EMPTY DAYS

EMPTY DAYS

The clock ticks away the emptiness of minutes

Another moment passes then another then another

Killing time by the hour after hour after hour

Drifting through this vacuum yearning to make a noise

We pass along unnoticed and without purpose

Hoping to catch one unguarded sideways glance

From those that dare to love and risk being loved

But if we are loved we think we are winning

Whilst those unknown unknowable other lives

All noticed yet destined to be forever unloved

The calendar marks away the emptiness of days

No longer endless as they flow fleetingly finite

Filling life’s empty void day after day after day

Sparkle fading Christmas tinsel packed in its box

Empty vessels lurching daily into filling the abyss

Cardboard boxes, bright carrier bags filling the chasm

Padding walls of custom-made hand-crafted asylums

Those silk-lined personal prisons of our own making

We inhabit hoping we can outwit or outsit eternity

All knowing there's no escaping from this comfort zone

Time eats away at another empty corroded vessel

Another life passing then another then another

The nothing and the nothing and the nothing

Each of us self-tortured by our own living hell

Watching and wondering and wishing and failing

Paths not trodden risks not taken lives not lived

Where once pulsed fresh energy now memories persist

Dissolving decaying ripening fruit expands to burst

As honey sweet treacle lives drip drip drip away

All fading as time’s slow leak becomes a deluge

Martin A W Holmes, 2018