twist-off love

if you can take the world
and stand it on its end
as I have done
what has really been accomplished

another feat of tolerance
or perhaps a slight of hand
indifferent in both meaning and intent
taking us nowhere

revealed, your pattern obvious
moments slipping past, unnoticed
in the end another twist-off love
disgarded as refuse

not a word being spoken ever heard
nor an adequate reply
to salvage the living from the dead
alike as if one

singularly captured
as holding sand in your grip
could ever bring you fully
to the meaning in your grasp

spilling ever outward
from your emptying hand
until the last grain has left you
holding nothing again

recycled from barren to bare
evidenced only in the sound
of your departing footsteps
walking back to the unknown

the only place where you wander
welcomed by your own silence
to pace the days alone
in the shade you call your home