Timeworn,
their ancestry settles around their ornamental faces.
Hands seconds apart
ready to strike at first hour.

At opposite ends of
an abandoned corridor,
their stilted figures of glass and wood are poised
forever in shrouded grace.

They argue in chime
fighting
desperately
for a when and a where.

Their ghostly
echoes
spill off buckled plaster
and frowzy marbled floors.

Dirty outlines graffiti the walls,
were old pictures hung, abruptly
bound in packing
and set away in archives of blackness.

The angry figures battle in chime
Quarter...
Half...
Hour...

Both needing desperately
for the other
to remember the beginning of
time.

The battle finishes
in weakening
ticks
and metallic
tocks.

At opposite---ends---they stand.
Stilted figures
frozen against time.
Their futures pleading for a new beginning.

Their pasts burning in weighted hostility.
These keepers of time,
these soldiers of minutes,
both lost at their own hands.

Timeworn
their chained weights
settle dangerously
behind the swinging arm.

The inner works sluggish.
Their hands pulsating
against their rattled faces as
gravity pulls.

Both reaching up
for the last hour,
reaching up
for the last
time.