Empty Laughter

A strange heaven with three clocks

Telling no time – a knockoff Mickey Mouse

Careens over the hiccupping,

Radioactive scans – a guard whose inanimate eyes

Stare blankly out at the even stranger guests -

There as if this heaven was made just for them -

Plastic clothing – cinched in all the wrong places – laughing

Emptily to each other in a web of vicious small talk -

One onlooker doesn’t belong there -

A little girl – mixed with tight, flopping braids

Sucks the life out of a vanilla shake -

A dissonance sent out to snap the strands of the strange,

Strange heaven until she – and her shake was all that was left.