Breakthrough

The visitors find the children gone from school:
aged relations sling their guns across the desks…
there’ll be no break-time for them unless
they talk about tomorrow
as though it’s already on its way.
Amen, oh yes, they’re
waiting for the breakthroug
h in time.
The visitors hide no aces up their sleeves
and the classroom pulses to many different drums.
If only a breakthrough in time would come
there’d be some chance for the visited ones.
We could talk about tomorrow
as though we believed in that.
e could talk about it right now,
and it would come as a shock
to feel the fingernail grow on the trigger finger —
still the visitors clock us waiting for the breakthrough,
waiting for the breakthrough
with time on our hands.
(It's there all the tim