Rebels

The rebel tore off the hands from his watch
and set them free in the garden: The minute hand
burrowed into the earth, squirming like a worm. The hour hand
bore a hole in the firmament of eternity, exploding
into rainbow neon confetti.

He waited for her on a street corner.
The street corner was on a continent on a planet within a solar system
spinning in a galaxy around an enormous black hole
inside of which a gigantic super computer dreamed
of tiny fragments of carbon-based consciousness
dancing the tango together on the edge of a volcano.

He smashed the blank watch face against a tree. Revolutions
started up again. The masses marched and the martyrs
made their messianic proclamations against the tyrants, who
watched the whole thing from secret underground bunkers,
toying with the controls of killer drones containing
weaponized plagues on irradiated darts.

He remembered her mascara, her glittering eyes, and
how she gazed into the vast emptiness of cosmic space
It was the day the rebel alliance captured the Higgs Boson,
the God particle. One day earlier, nanotechnological breakthroughs
began to inextricably convert the material universe
to colorless, odorless grey goo.

The rebels protested against space, time, God, the mother, sanity,
comic books, freedom, slavery, and antimatter. The government
told the people not to panic. Sensing the encroaching
overwrite of the code, animals began to balk. She couldn’t go
anywhere in her Manolo Blahnik heels once the movie
stopped and the herd stampeded through the mall.

Night rebelled against day. Time rebelled against space.
The streets were drenched in the blood of patriots.
They found each other in the third scene of the fifth act,
two mini black holes, unraveling
one toy universe after another, eternally returning
to what never was.