I like to pretend
I no longer have a heart
but sometimes
I pull it out of the bottom drawer
and speak to it
just so it knows
that I know
its still there
and apologize
for all I have poured over it
to bury its existence
and all the times
I gave it to the undeserving
I make promises
that it will be freed again
someday
then safely tuck it away
and sneak back out of her house.

I am tired of series of unfinished poems that scream for my return.
I am tired of internal, trenching,
desperate calls
for pen and paper.
I am tired of empty pages,
and pens being put down.
I am tired of the fragmentary
*******-business I have with my declaration of expression.
I want to write about rough ****** efforts
and soft
aching feelings.
I want to write about Coca Cola freezies
(because they don’t even exist, why?).
I am tired of looking at everyone else’s work,
admiring it, criticising it, admiring it, criticising it, admiring it, crying, loving it.
I want to be 60 and look at what I wrote When I was 19,
And sob.

I fell asleep against
the stained glass that painted
the ground with colors that
children only see through
the lenses of kaleidoscopes;
vividness that blind men
only see when holding the
warm hands of their lovers.

I woke up to the bells
singing tunes of the eschaton
and the priest muttering
damnation upon the half-empty
bottle of Jim Beam resting in my lap.

"Want a swig?" I asked with a stagger.
"No," he replied.  "Whiskey is the devil's elixir

and besides,
there are plenty a bottle of Christ's blood behind the altar from which to choose."

Mind cannot reason the reason of the heart