This heart will last me a lifetime
If only because when it fails,
I fail,
But this heart, barely half way through its span is already much damaged,
For whilst the attack that did not claim me
Left no visible disease
The slings and arrows of emotional assaults, betrayal
And cunning, low and savage attack
Have left an invisible mark,

Every selfish unwarranted ******
Leaves a hole which heals slowly,
Oozing my life's essence all the while
Until the damage is patched by a layer of hard scabrous tissue,
A crude patch to mend a hole
Yet limiting the function once there found,
A tiny or not so small area which is not quite the same
And cannot fully carry its load any more,
A small damaged piece of me,
That fails

One such part? Hardly worth the notice and
Already as always forgiven,
But it is not just the one small part is it?
It's a fine network of such holes with the occasional larger ****
Where the stab was sawn and worked and
Widened with savage glee
Yet still healed or healing and still already
And as always forgiven                                                         ­                         
But the whole of me that part not stiffened and dead
Is smaller now

That shrinkage is not visible to the outside world
Nor will it be yet the shrinkage of useable
Worthwhile working tissue
Leads only one way and at this ever increasing rate
Of damage the end is coming close,
But who cares?
Well no one it appears
Because the attacks and the wounds are neither slower
Nor stopped,
So soon instead it seems
I will,
My heart will


Stop
Stopped

How many poems have I writ?
And how easy has the process been?
To think and to conjure from my brain
Unto the printed page,

Ideas and concepts flowing
in a seamless joyous
Tide of vocabulary and
Profusion

Until a while ago.
When everything.
Just.
Stopped.

So what is it?
What is this ******* thing
That circumvents my joy
And my creativity?

Where is it skulking?
Coward! Come forth,
Be fought!
But it would not

Did not
And I did not write,
My pen was silent
But not my creativity,

Until I met some strangers
Who became immediate
Fast friends and true,
I opened up

And ideas flew,
Turns out
The block was that no one actually
Asked me to write,
No one and especially not me!

Well these new friends did,
And the blockage,
In that instant,
Died
And went

And so this verse,
Poor though it be,
And first in quite a while,
Has indeed

Snuck out

Under

The wire

It's funny how hospitals,
Whence one goes to heal
Or die,
Focus ones mind upon
Profound things,

Life and death for sure
But also the life that's been lived
The life being lived,
Being dead and also
The process of dying,

I do not wish to die
In a hospital ward,
I have seen this and
I have heard it
And it is horrid,

No,
Let me pass good Lord
In the arms of a beautiful woman,
Or the embrace of a wooden boat,
With sails full and ocean spray
All about me,

Let me die astride a galloping horse,
Or in the metal clashing of swords,
The crack and ping of an airsoft war
Or the twang and thud of archery,

Let me pass on a zip wire Lord,
With the scream of a block
In my ears,
Or wining and dining
With my loved ones,

Any of these things Lord will do,
Or anything else the same,
But let me die while living Lord,
Not on a hospital ward
In shame