It pumps blood
But not love
And though flooded
With toxins
Of noxious
Too often
And so like
The forbidden fruit
Becomes rotten
When serpentine
Inamoratas
Besotted
Betray it,
Delay its
Carotid
From reaching the brain
Where innate tendencies
Conflate infatuation
With fate’s
Meant to be’s
And pulse-pounding
Decrees
Of the tightening squeeze
And the ease in which
One more attack
Cardiac
Seems to break it
And render it
Barely intact
But it keeps beating on
With each stroke
Of arrest
Testing it
Till its limits
Burst out of your chest
Or unless
It is ripped from it
Like the Aztecs