Perhaps, you cannot
see this...  

Yet, there she drapes,
bound and bent back in
the arms of lustrous tethers.
Hovering in the darkened theater
flickering of fervent grace
through the lingering, suspended
wisps of a pilgrim's prayer candle,
she is hanging there.
Like a staged angel,
all string and no capability.

Oh, but can you feel that?

The sounds of passing instants
are reverberating, groaning
echoes from the way she is
swaying out there, reminiscent
of cellos and splintering boughs,
gutted hymns and cabaret.
No specter dares upon the crumbling
curtain, such fear to provoke her from
waste. This pledge has the intensity of
perpetual motion. Chimes heard
in the distant twelfth hour breed
this crime, only to start once more, timeless.

Could you cope with eternity?  

Stretching thin as if she were
time itself, the keeper reclines
in her net of binds with the
patience of compliance, bare feet
curling in the way ribbons singe.
'Round the shifting dune, afloat
and spiraling, a living pendulum
whose fingertip draws the continuous
circle to mark this rotation in blistering,
petrifying sands. She draws the map,
if only to prove how long the snake
can devour its own end.

Should anyone empathize with this?

If only to see the passage of this
wait, this lingering, she plots the pro
longing. Every revolution,
a testimony to the hope of the devotee,
or willpower itself. Yet, the diagram has
no visible end... Such provides judgment,
pitiable excuse. A murderer in that midst,
killing time, hanging instead of falling
on the stage of selfish history.
Whitened knuckles bruise
to forbid freedom from that cocoon
of silken chains, bones fuse to
maintain the self-imposed prison
in open air. She is her own keeper,
coiling in the confines of devotion,
waiting, as every transient eventually will.

Perhaps,
you cannot see this...

Time is thought at its
most destructive, decaying the
infinite to trickling sands in the
hourglass. Superimposed on
every possibility, we have distinguished
our own slavery and prophecy...
Thus, you will see this.
As two hands on the clock tower,
we will always catch up to one another.
When the keeper's circle passes you,
light the prayer candle, pilgrim,
and witness what shade is cast.