Asynchronous Clock

Steam pulses through an iron train.
Hisses and sighs set a refrain.
A lady covers her face in scorn.
Ex-miners panhandle to cover lost bets.
Bandannas haven't been enough to filter the air lately.
Pollution wounds dainty lungs like her's.
Coal coasts like pollen and deposits there.
Oil drips from the hydraulics as blood from a cut.
The conductor screams; he has lost his wits.
He saw a fright but won't say what.
Invisible horrors come from the abyss, jutting.
Dr.Jones prescribes the conductor rest with a wet washcloth.
Ladies-in-waiting titter in their posh clothes.
Who'd expect to see such a spectacle?
Two ticket-counters carry the mumbling man to bed.
It's probably opium what turned his face so red.
Ahead the rails were shelled.
The wheels rebel.
The train derails, spills, wavers, piles.
Survivors tremble immediately after.
Much later gentlemen pale and the dainty ladies-who-wait faint at the remembrance.
Sometimes, a man foresees his future.

Inert

Pink pearls are pulled on far shores next to shining sand-embedded shells.
Tides tug and rub with sand.
Bubbles popping on waves' lips shift through wet sediment.
Patterns are multitudinous and complex beyond recognition.
Patterns're firm as cement.

Cintare

Lights display in the night's skies.
Orbs overhead form mysteries from the gilt-framed fragments bedded in mass conscience.
Military? Alien? Wind causes clouds to stray but the luminaries never sway; they stay
in formation.
For many evenings after it had begun the portent of unknown import hung in the thin cold home of dark matter.
Then they were gone.