Deoxygenated blood flows from the body to the right side of the heart through the Vena Cava.
From the Vena Cava to the Right Atrium.
From the Right Atrium through the Tricuspid valves.
Through the Tricuspid valves to the Right Ventricle.
Up the Pulmonary Artery.
Through the semi-luner valves.
Out the pulmonary artery.
To the lungs.
Blood becomes Oxygenated
Oxygenated blood flows from the lungs to the left side of the heart through the Pulmonary Vein.
From the Pulmonary Vein to the Left Atrium.
From the Left Atrium through the Bicuspid valves.
Through the Bicuspid valves to the Left Ventricle.
Up the Aorta.
Through the semi-luner valves.
Out the Aorta.
Oxygenated blood is sent around the body.
Blood becomes Deoxygenated
Deoxygenated blood flows from the body to the right side of the heart through the Vena Cava........

SO If you tell me your heart is "literally broken" just don't.
It isn't broken.
It just hurts.
It's just feels horrible.
Painful.
A feeling that hurts you and feels like your heart hurts so much that it's actually broken.
But your heart doesn't actually hurt.
It's just a feeling.
The cycle stills goes on.
It is still functioning.
So, next time you feel your "heart breaking" and literally being "torn apart",

Remember...

Deoxygenated blood flows from the body to the right side of the heart through the Vena Cava.
From the Vena Cava to the Right Atrium.
From the Right Atrium through the Tricuspid valves.
Through the Tricuspid valves to the Right Ventricle.
Up the Pulmonary Artery.
Through the semi-luner valves.
Out the pulmonary artery.
To the lungs.
Blood becomes Oxygenated
Oxygenated blood flows from the lungs to the left side of the heart through the Pulmonary Vein.
From the Pulmonary Vein to the Left Atrium.
From the Left Atrium through the Bicuspid valves.
Through the Bicuspid valves to the Left Ventricle.
Up the Aorta.
Through the semi-luner valves.
Out the Aorta.
Oxygenated blood is sent around the body.
Blood becomes Deoxygenated
Deoxygenated blood flows from the body to the right side of the heart through the Vena Cava.............

Lovesick and you've got the cure.
Got all these symptoms. You know what for.
Don't be afraid of this contagious disease,
Just take my requisition form.

I've made room for you in my atria and ventricle.
You're the capillary to my arteriole and venule.
You're the amniotic fluid to the child in my heart.
I find you even in the interstitial parts.

Treatment like uours is like a centrifugAl force.
So be the **** stasis my heart is longing for.
Some homeostasis is what we need.
We will make compromises to succeed.

Lay me supine and you in prone.
Sensory neurons fire
Exocrine glands make to pressure
Spark endocrine glands to hear you moan.

Without your heart I'd be anemic.
Withiutbyour arms I'd be half a paraplegic.
Your kisses give me air, without them I'm cyatonic.
You're the fibrin in my veins, to my pain an anesthetic.

I'm ready for some long-term care and affection.
Got a chronic condition that needs your attention.
I k now I'm concluded, parts of me sclerosed.
Don't wait post mortem to know that you're the most.

I'd love to peer into that brain of yours and see the actual mechanics of your thinking.  Where those creative juices of yours throb and pulse. Ya, I'll drink to that.

   Maybe use one of them scopes to explore the left ventricle of your heart (you know, that chamber of the Heart that pumps blood through the aorta).  Figure out that sensitive heart of yours.

   Explore the rubber consistency of the lining of your lungs. With that heaving chest and ******* of yours, those lungs must be so healthy in their pinkish hue.   Just some barstool thoughts while waiting for closing time.

   Staring into this shot glass in front of me, my memory harkens back to the time you cut your arm and I ****** the blood from it, so salty and all.  I want to bottle you up in a liquid formula or capsulize your essence in a unique pill form where I can digest and absorb you and grow new cells from the energy I receive from the calories of your precious body.

   Maybe with the power of your bodies flesh I can grow a sixth toe, develop a third eye, build an *****.  I love you so much I could eat you up!

   Barkeep says this is last call so I better drink up and be on my way.  I wonder what your left ventricle really looks like under close inspection?  
   Just wondering, do you have any x-rays of your body I could have?
                                             See ya,   Creepy  Ray Ray

In my real life,
not a poet,
just an astronomer,
an observer of
universes, bodies,
places, faces,
visited, discovered,
named and oft,
best forgot.

I observe:

Some never find true love.
Some never fly first class.
Some of us
never see the
South of France.

Some of us wear
hand-me-down pants,
white lined creases when “let down,”
mocked, we never forgive ourselves
the shame of it.

Some never experience
reckless abandon.

Yet, some of us are
recklessly abandoned,
and never forget,
and never forgive.

Some of us lose
children, husbands,
avanti nel tempo,
before their time,
and
the anger is
forever, palpable,
costly.

Some of us
were raised by
someone else's parents,
and never rest easy,
the abandoned taste
always nearby,
a cruel living, breathing
teasing wasting

Some we can pass over
with ease,
as new tissue grows,
those cuts marked -
emotionally healed.

But the ones that scar,
the ones that visible scar
permanent reddened,
are the
holocaust deniers
that there is a real
promised land of
peace of mind.

Peace of mind -
not even for a second,
foretold but
unrealized,
a biblical myth,
a promised land,
a capitalist paradisal hoax.

Some never feel
public victory,
adulation, adoration,
always wearing the T-shirt labeled
Property of Someone Else.

Most of us remain
unpublished, undiscovered,
unremarked, blanketed,
cloaked in bills to pay;

Living a triumvirate of
heart ache, loneliness, worry,
our normal table fare
consists
of hand to hand
into the mouth
combat MRE's,
we engage,
to survive,
just stay alive.

We are not digitalized,
nonetheless,
we are
but digits,
our faces hidden, and
in no one's heart book
are we recorded,
friended,
yet our viewing habits,
purchases, secret sites
are enumerated, captured.

Some of us live
exclusively
in the real life,
never to escape to the
province of Wifi,
in the landscape
of the electronic mind,
an option for which
we are
untrained.

Perhaps sanctity of separation,
safety of text, email,
avec the ******* intrusion
of tweets are
the real life today,
games are always won,
and what we don't enjoy,
we just delete away

But In My Real Life
getting up is trying,
IMRL,
the trying is trying,
IMRL,
delete buttons don't exist      
in the keyboard
of our brains,
IMRL,
all we have is a
measly twenty six aleph bets
to find new ways to say
that living is striving and
what we feel is
oh so real,
not digital

IMRL,
when I laugh out loud,
the neighbors
beat the walls,
complainants,
registering their feelings
in my face,
in my book,
so to speak.

IMRL,
I got a friend,
maybe two,
all I need,
voices to help soften
the 400 blows of RL.

Their synthesized silence
of their breathing
on the phone
is precious unto me.

IRL,
limp from Friday
night to
Friday
night,
a bottle of Medoc
my weekend reward,
my bedrock cushion
in order to sleep.

After all these years,
gains and losses,
conversations with God,
I look up,
see the risk,
the slightest breeze
is a
hurricane wind.

The shaft,
of the
the sword
hanging above me
the hilt,
swaying in living color,
is no legend.

But what I have is
the ability
and maybe
the responsibility
to let anyone know
that
in my real life
anyone who touches me
with fine and good intent,
a momentary glancing blow
or a gunshot to the ventricle,
is part and parcel of
my real life.

This makes you real too,
savior, and hereby notified,
that you are not
just an observer, but
a poet of me,
an astronomer of my heart,
and namer of
a secret universe
inside of me.


Sept. 1, 2010

_____________________________
US Army jargon: meals ready to eat

My body is the training ground for
All of the reject demons
My inner demons failed to qualify as the right sort of fight
To match with any worthwhile struggles so

My inner demons are over dramatic children
     They do not wage wars
     They throw tantrums
     They stand inside my temples and pound the walls
     When they do not get what they want
     And shriek ringing into my ears until they turn blue
     Then fall asleep when they get tired
     Forgetting that they were supposed to be upset
My inner demons are pretentious
     They call themselves demons
     When they are more like imps
     They tickle at anxiety with the nerve to call it an attack
     And separate velcro and seams with the audacity to say that
     They broke something
     Then press on my heart
     Daring to call it an ache
My inner demons are clumsy
     They walk with their toes curling around my eyelashes
     And slip and spill their handfuls of tears
     At inopportune moments
     As I tremble due to the ones
     That have tripped and tangled themselves
     In my heartstrings and vocal cords
     Causing me to grasp my rib cage in desperate attempts to reach them
     And tear apart the inconveniences
My inner demons are shy
     They sway in my veins to the rhythmic pulse
     With clawed hands outstretched to the blue walled sky
     Cautious to never leave a scratch through my skin
     They dance on nerve endings and muscle tissue
     With footwork just gentle enough to not summon bruises
     And hold themselves still against my capillaries
     As if their presence might distract my blood from
     Its daily circulation
My inner demons are hoarders
     They over-stuff the filing cabinets in my brain
     With reports and analysis of too many situations
     And pick up old emotions and hide them in the recesses
     Of each ventricle and aorta
     Creating pseudo-space for newer, stranger, replicas
     Then pack extra breaths into my lungs
     Storing "just in case" inhalations and overused sighs
     They insulate their homes with extra calories and extra clothes
     Hiding until they can forget themselves
My inner demons are moody
     They like to stitch up new wounds with the thorns of roses
     And pry open old ones with feathers
     They tie my tongue with pages of foreign textbooks
     They tie my tongue in gauze and cotton
     They tie my tongue with other tongues
     And pins and needles and teeth and drawstrings
     They are self depreciating and they know that they
     Are not worthy of their title

My inner demons are pathetic
     I suppose they're right where they belong

My sweater is torn.
And its January. She can sew.
She taught herself on a Sunday afternoon last July.

My sleeve caught on the door handle as I left.
It was trying to stop me,
Hold me back, teach me a lesson.

The handle took my button.
I didn’t care. I could go back and get it.
But not today. I’ll fix it.

Stars, toggles, squares,
Pink, blue, white, navy.
I find a grey circle.

The thread finds its way
Through the four chambers
Of the button.

Atrium to ventricle.
Ventricle to atrium.
I double knot it.

She can sew.
I didn’t care.
And now I wear my button on my sleeve.

Black knife, through my heart
Poisoning me slowly; vein by vein, ventricle by ventricle
Your black venom takes me over like the sweet taste of iced lemonade on a hot summer's day.
You kissed me, then left me in the street.
You touched me, then left me here to weep.

Exes and Ohs
Litter the page
Sprinkled around in a random matter
Without age

Relative to time
Persecuted for that one word
That one crime

Exes and Ohs
Meaningless apart
Like a left ventricle
Without the right heart

Two halves  
Of the same bilateral organism
An awkward moment
Nervous laughs

Eyes forward
Minds in each other's pants
Forget needless pleasantries
Deposit in wilting potted plants

Hugs and kisses
Sincerely yours
Tell me why
It's me you ignore

in this
pocketful
        of limbo
          the distance rises
               in curls of smoke
        a prairie fire
siphoning into
crisp edge
           of forest
          Inside my
uncloaked ventricle
primeval forces
turn my blood into
dusted gold
as they pump
        sacred texts
into my oxygen
      They roll your quintessence
upon my fingers,
            playing inside
     my psyche's  
wild ache
a spread of orifice
in spellbound mantra,
       as I spit out
          the
            hairy thorns,
a holy purge of
   internal
        engravings
    
Somehow ---
like a miracle,
I grow ripe seedlings
from deep within
            my womb
as I trip into
a universe rising
I take wisps
of your grace
as it brushes
the jut of my
astral collarbone
You are always
         grounding me
                    like this,
               my tongue
              tripping
         over velvet
stance of warrior
        assuaged into silk
    
        Without you,
I might be
whisked off into
the periphery
of chaos
but instead
       I am simply
tied to
      the urgency
of the little novas
about to
        explode

While I wait
            I tend to
              the wildfires.
     to make sure they
                   are still burning
I keep my honey
wet and fresh
upon your
                   lips,
let my pores
drip moonpools
    into your glistening
wet of mouth
and only when
          it is time
I let the whole of
           me burst
into the
      fire -wrapped
tips of
   stars

Decisions decisions

The butcher chose to remove the tail first today

He was a teller of tails.

He once told of a tail so long that he had to chop it with a French curving blade

The one he bought from Trevor down by the market.



Next the butcher decided to remove the left ventricle

"My mother always said I should have been a surgeon" he lamented

but she was a heartless old cow,

unlike this old cow.

He removed the ventricle.



Next came it's walking boots

Leather boots... Ironic

These boots were made for walking,

but where to?

Away... Just away.



Finally he decided to take the cows head,

and in its eyes he saw his reflection,

covered in blood,

tired,

rough.

Doing things some people would detest him for.

He looked at that man and thought to himself

"Is this what I want to be?

Is this all that I am?"

The question hung in the air with the smell of raw beef.

And he smiled and said,

"This is what I am. I'm happy with this."

And he hung the meat in the window to show his craft.

We lay down together.  

Unable to move.  

Our smell the same.  

Skin stretched out.  

Holding each other’s hand.

The days and weeks we hadn’t been eating properly didn’t show on her figure as it did mine.  She still looked full.  

Muscles and waist growing tighter, thinner.  But hers,
Hers

Her face, *******, lips, hadn’t changed.

An animal in love with beauty.  Old beauty, future beauty.

Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia.  We had been travelling Europe for some time.  That’s where we were.  One of those places.  All of them.

And the heat kept beating, making me sweat.  
It made her sweat too.  
But we always had enough energy to be together.  

                  As our bodies become hungrier, our need for each others skin increased.  
                  Her sighs and moans and thighs becoming louder.  Penetrating darkness.  
                  The cicadas.  Black trees.  Collapsing.  Grinding.  Feeding.

Our love, returning to dusk my dear...  

Giving life back to the morning.  Killing each other.
Controlling hell.

A stretch of green.  Hard hills.  
Sand inside our **** and hair;
The ground, and her perfect smell.

We stand-up, and continue to walk through the breeze towards the train station.
I pray the monies been wired.  We stop.  I pull her into myself.  
Tell her all these things.  

She smiles  
our bodies join  
and hills the size of Gods

                                                           ­      Became nothing again.

                                                         ­                          :::
            

‘We will be fine.’

She said gracefully.

                                                    ­                               :::

            

There was nothing at the station hardly  
but a shop was open in the blazing afternoon
the unknown shop-keeper didn’t smile
but sold us enough with what we had to get us drunk;

There were no people or trains/we had five hours to burn until the next one came
the day stretched out and up into the evening as we laughed and screamed like two boiling oysters drunk in a kitchen time passed into and through the hours we wound around each other like two fighting seas her thighs tensing with absolute strength on my lap moaning from her stomach and into the sky

as I did
we kissed again, slowly and absolute - celebrating release
making the day travel into night

my back lay against the cold wood of the station seat
we began to wind down.
and the need for hope faded as we both began to sleep

I said one last thing to her to make her laugh a little, before we rested in wait for the last train.

She began to curl into rest, her hair across my lap, but I notice that she sees one more thing before her eyes shut.  She was looking down to the end of the station where the entrance was.  Her eyes burst.  Her laughter stopped like a match being put out.  
Her nails dig into my leg.

I smile down telling her she can’t fool me with the same old tricks; then I look too.

He was coming.

He moved like slow clay.

‘No.’

‘There’s just one of him... I can take him.'

We have to get this train...’  I think.

His lips lay still like two grey worms on top of each other.  Emotion.
Less.  Moving towards us.

And there was no-where else for us to go.  No more running.  
And I wouldn’t have run even if I could.

And this is what I thought seconds before he was near us.





11.46 pm.
the train nears
the night mixing with the hopeless age of the station
gently moving her body to one side I began to run at the man walking towards us
i call every mutilated thought I can from my mind and air
silence them
and pour them only into my movemnet

He was Russian like her.  Old school Russian.  No sympathy for an English ******* wanna be saviour like me.

No sympathy.
I jumped into the air - I could see he hadn’t expected that  
the time I hung there expanded for miles dying slower than normal
i have time to see his cold receding head,
the lines across his wide brow/the shoulders of a man half-bull
eyes etched into wood
he looks up as I connect

I land an elbow directly to his face before I land fully catching him with my momentum
all of my weight landing on his nose and mouth
‘let this slow him down’  I ask fate
the adrenalin jack-knifing through my body like a restless rush of pure red almost bringing it to a halt
tt rocks him, a little...
next: left
left
straight right
the biggest one i've  
Blood.

His head hung slightly low in sudden contemplation and pain
he still has a lot left.  I think

A gorilla dancing with a fly.

i follow up with more punches
his hand shoots for my throat faster than I can react

I can punch.  But he’s taken many a man like me.  
I think




No air.




I hear Russian
And parts of the station again.
I hear her voice
Straight in its pitch and unchanging melody
But-without-the-laughter.  
I can tell she’s scared from the way she puts too many words in her sentences, too fast.  
I see his grey outline pushing a much smaller one against the wall.
I think about Natashka back inside one of those rooms.

I think about her sorrow and strong will.  
Defiant, but captive.  

I was certain at every turn that she was misleading me.  
(She was)
She had bent my logic so far back it stayed there and made sense again
like a wild contortionist miming a perfect song

I had travelled miles to find her
after three months of dream I finally did.

“ah Jerome”.  
She Said.

We drank and made love for hours.  
reality adjusted to us
not the other way around

dark forms behind the curtains of an apartment
a bed of velvet sweat
wrapped around you, inside you.  

*****.  No air.  New life.
  
“Jerome”  She said after three days.
“You-must-go.  I have lied.  They come here when I call them.  They make you give money...”
“I know hon.”  I said.

“Lets go.”

We made final, violent, love.  
And then left.
I will now owe ‘at least 25,000 Euro’s’ she tells me

I figure it’s all worth-it
“That’s alright”  I reply
and light up as we leave the building





My rib-cage roars into the ground with disgust and rage.  
My remaining spirit pours into my hands and knees as I rise.
A dead sprinter.
A dead man
still rising;
A spitting snarl.  A scream.
The rats are woken.  
Old angels are woken.  
And I ask all the beer drunk spirits that are close to help me.

I tackle him hard into the wall, we crash into Natashka
but she moves just in time, even his legs are heavy, they slow my rage,
i only manage to get one, its under my right arm, held with both hands, my left leg steps inside his remaining right, behind it, I pull, the trip works,
he falls.  

I hear the train.  I follow me in
again
all I have in the world is surprise
and his squat body is the strength of three of mine
emptied into one.

And at the maddest of times it’s the strangest of things you remember:  
i see the lights of the train flashing across her whole body
and for a moment she transforms
and is complete light...

I’ve climbing on top of him
i strike down with the madness of ten days drunk on whiskey.  
aortas ventricle pulse

His powerful fingers grasping at my limbs trying to stop me, but it’s no use.
spears made of bone ****** down into his face
and the old angels watch, as I connect, drooling and enjoying the show, happy to throw me a few chips

His arms begin to flop down like tired wild animals returning to sleep
and perhaps my fury and revulsion can break even him
my hands on her body;
i force her on the train with the last of our money
the conductors can only see two drunks fighting beside a beautiful bystander.
I force her on.

“Jerome.”  She says screaming.

A clay hand takes my breath again as it locks around my mouth from behind me.  
I manage to hold the door shut long enough while being suffocated so that the train is moving with her inside
and when the train is leaving, I finally feel joy.

“Jerome.”  She says still.

And  finally I hear not.  

Not the man choking me or the time of day.  
In the seconds that my lungs drown, I feel only the bliss of having known you, a last toast before I rest within the driving sea, salt-water changing my lungs
but I know my last action was with all my soul, my mind, my body.

Natashka, I drink to you, fully.  Finally.
This thought fills my gut.
His hands across my mouth, my eyes begin to shut.
Her smell.  

That was the last thing I thought about.



                                                       ­                                ...




I’m looking down at my body, the Russian’s beside me breathing hard.
Tired.  Big.

And then to my shock I see Natashka again.  
Walking from the far end of the station back to the area where all the scrapping happened;
one of her knees bleeding and ripped, she limps, as if something is completely broken, her foot perhaps, out of time with the rest of her body.  

She drags her handicapped body all the way towards me and clay man standing beside me.
I can only watch.
When her tattered body gets close, I get to see all the cuts, one side of herself is badly damaged where she jumped from the train
and dislocated half the joints in her body

And when she is only a reach away from him.  She touches his chest.
Hands that can change anything.

And I look at them both.  
And death saves you from nothing at all.  
You just observe the same things, at a slower pace, from a different position;

you try to tell the suicides this, but; few want to listen...
there’s nothing wrong with oblivion, just remember that once you’re there, you still need something to do...

I break down.  Knees hitting the ground.
I see her body slide into him, closer, her hand disappears behind his back
like thin snake wondering around a rock
searching

Now

she stands pointing his own gun at him.  A shot goes into his head.  No hesitation.  Now she looks down at me, beside my choked corpse, a gun still in her hand. Weeping.

My hand wants to reach up to her.  
I can't.  

Another bullet fired
it discharges through her mouth, destroying her head.

Now she lays down beside me too
between me and russian hit man

The station endures our blood as we bleed out
forming one river that trickles down onto the tracks and gutter
you can’t tell whose blood is whose
or who is bleeding out the most

I look up at a light-bulb in the roof;
it tenses one more time, making the mosquitoes dance in quiet frenzy, before it lets out a final scream, cracking out of life.  Going-out-softly.

My head comes back down and I see another person standing only a few steps away from me.

With a turn of her head she suddenly flicks me a half-smile
the kind she knows I like
the kind that rips the spirit right out from your chest and makes it feel good.

Before we begin to walk away together something makes me turn
and we both look behind ourselves. The Russian looks down at his body too, the lines in his face are still, and yet we know how he feels.

He looks across at us as we walk away down the tracks
we can see only the deep set hoods of his brow, shadows for eyes;
he moves his feet slightly so he now faces us flat

he raises one of his palms
as the other searches for his cigarettes
in the first movement I have seen him make casually all-day

I hear him say the words:

“Do svidaniya. Moi druz'ya. Byt' khorosho"

And although his language isn’t mine, I know this means:

"Goodbye."

"My Friends."

"Be well."

                                                         ­                             ...

Tighten your braces with yellows,
UV lights in police cars,
your high socks and new crewnecks,
steep all your worries in the cellar air.
The kitchen crew necks you,
steps over your extra vertebrae on the floor.
Exchange Red Sox caps and collaged cards for
iron oxides and spare joints,
an apology gift for the knees of a Titan.

Gilt neckties and stockings
hard hits over first base,
infrared silhouettes waving goodbye
slip on the steep porch stairs.
Your personal marching bands
sleep in shopping carts.
Your postcards lost in the Andes
written in purple pen --
everything’s smells like guilt.

Harts stagger behind
stags that hope to tiptoe around your toes,
scouting the suites in South America.
Back roads hastily swept under dining room chairs.
Necklaces of burned out light bulbs,
players sock the suited callers.
My bird house is empty.
Your world map is crumpled,
stuffed into the left ventricle of my heart.

Knaps of your wrist bones
fill the endnotes of my biography.
Bottlenecked bus loops and
windsocks left deflated in broom closets.
Your left hand in my kitchen sink,
catches my pressed shirts,
your clothesline melts into the sidewalk like lightning.
Bracelets on marble sculptures.
After you, I need a nap.

Littoral instructions spelled out in sand dollars.
Purple sunflower seeds caught in my turtleneck,
ghosts of eyelashes begin
to whisper wishes,
sockets for wrenches and ankles.
Blue hair braces for the midnight smiles,
the low tide of flowers,
the daily newspaper full of ocean currents,
your lips were too literal.

Lumbar dimples and goose bumps,
the rubbernecking waiter waited for the lights
rubbing his eyes.
Your playful dialogue
makes my plate shake.
Your safety is never on,
eyebrows marking my fifth disappointment.
I usually hate piano solos,
your voice is unstable, charred lumber.

Mince the pages of the dictionary
to make kindling for your irises.
Necklines defined as jade stamps
at the bottoms of the Chinese paintings
above last year’s birthday card.
Connect the dots to see the ruins of Rome,
your arms after the final battle,
crude stitches on undone sweaters.
Your pockets still full of dinner mints.

Canvass the imprint on the inside of
your leg from where the stitching folds over,
your jeans, unwashed in my laundry hamper.
Still overflows from knee socks and potted plants.
Microwaves compressed into my glass of water
the high tide seashells in your pantry facing
your ego in mason jars on shelves.
You’re tired of white board marker promises,
your skin a poorly cleaned canvas.

If my blood could illustrate,
A picture to the world,
It will tell you the exact state,
How my heart pumps its hurt.

Each ventricle pumps emotions,
Pain, anger, hope,
Up to my brain,
And down to my toes.

Slithering through each artery and vein,
Blood carves my hearts pain,
In my head,
In my head.

Working through each capillary,
It forges anger and rage,
In my bones,
My aching bones.

After its done its work,
It fights back through each valve,
And pours back into the atriums,
Devoid of fury and pain.

It was used up,
Just like my tears,
My wasted energy for nothing,
It brought me no good.
Just more hurt.

And just slowly,
As the pain and anger dissipates from my system,
And fresh blood is packaged and sent,
From my bone marrows,
It brings along a slimmer of hope,
That this new cycle of blood would carry no more pain.

They tell me that its beautiful
They tell me that its sad
They say they wish they had a man
whos felt the way I have
but so little they know
They missed the simple fact
presenting love so powerful
is seldom given back

what i find beautiful were the breathed conversations we shared between the kisses we shared and this whole situation is reaching into my cavities and contorting my heart into places of infinite joy and infinite sorrow and infinite apologies maybe you will never feel the same way but i do and god the way you hold me will be imprinted on my skin on my flesh on my left ventricle forever because **** i miss you and **** i miss your companionship but i cannot ask for you back and now all i have are three perfect weeks of a simulation of how it could be like and how we could have driven each other crazy with our thoughts and our love but i guess it is always like this right the most beautiful things are the ones that exist in your head and never manifest into reality because reality is messed up and this is why all of this is an absolute beautiful mess.

I didn’t hand it over
I neglected to sign a consent
I never said you could                                 yet you did anyway

a cavity within my chest
anatomical rather than cliché
the mask told me it’s a ventricle                then I stuttered okay

hollowed inside thick walls
it gathers substance productively
like a strawberry picker                              but the berries are smashed

I am standing in the waiting room
of the Coronary Care Unit
and I am counting because numbers
are the only things feeling real to me today.
Ten steps from the door. Nine hours into the day.
Eight times I have already said ******* under my breath.
Room number seven. Six ways that a heart can step out of rhythm.
Five people in a family that might soon be reduced to four.
Three cardiologists that cannot tell me what the hell has happened.
Rumor has it that two of those six arrhythmias are fatal. You have had one.
One door separating me from one person
laying in one room with one ventricle
that does not, will not, and cannot
pump.

We all carry someone inside of us—
someone that climbs up our spine and sleeps
on a hammock stretched across our rib cage.
Carry me and day after day
I will be your second heart,
beating outside of your chest,
reminding you of all the reasons you have
to cut yours out.

I'm ruptured whole and am considered
inadequate
as my
amygdala slides through the trachea drops to my ventricles falls through the aorta plunges to my diaphragm hits the esophagus crashes to my phalanges.         There is no hope.
May I hold something over your cranium?
May I remind you of your neuron imbalance? And yet
you sit and
watch as
my septum separates from the left atrium from the right ventricle from the bicuspid from the tricuspid from the pulmonary semi-lunar valve.
I love you.                             (Stupid cerebral cortex.)
I love you.                             (Imprudent Broca's area.)
I love you.                             (Hopeless frontal lobe.)
I love your nonfunctional mind and functional soul and

Well

this is all a metaphor for unrequited love.

sometime before sunrise,
when the morn world is
still a dusky daylight, unclassified blue, me slip-slide out
of the communal bed,  where I have been up all night,
draw-drafting poems for manufacture, sale, & gift wrapping,
to await the sunrise, the sunrise, in the famous sunroom,
in a vainglorious attempt to salvage forty winks, full knowing,
that even if I'm successful, the risen eye poking rays of
one the most glorious sights which we earthlings
have been privileged and entrusted,
the sun coming with a clarification of life renewal,
will stab me into consciousness

there I lay with eyes closed, either noisy napping dreaming
like baby wendy, gurgling or emitting contentment noises,
or perfectly still, having slipped a fiver to some tenors,
to entertain me while I slide lie still on the composing continuum

the sun round seven
is maximus glorious and cannot be
looked upon by the audience in direct prayer askance,
so my eyes closed in pleasured servitude, me,
my lumpen proletariat rubenesque carcass corps is

bath burnished in sun glow so warm, so living,
that the warming words are causing a major traffic jam
in the ventricle where the love poems are formed and stored,
but fervency disguised by an unmoving, close lidded human shape

shortly after seven,
the slip soft padding feet of her rumbling noisily,
knowing where to look for him from
much practice, beginning her experimentation to determine
if me-he still among the breathing, or gone to poem heaven

since she aware, the poet in his possess, a
Masters Degree in Pretend Sleeping, must eventually
take drastic measures including kissing my keppy,
then climbing aboard my fetal incongruently angled body
with no warning other than a grunting of deep satisfaction, when,
with all her modest weight in a single swoop, intended to fell,
causing me to emit a volcanic exclamation of

you're killing me*

satisfied, nah, more sated, with a sense of
feminist goddess power ranger satisfaction,
she prepares coffee, grinding the beans, just in case,
I return to my sleep fakery status,
literally, a literary impossibility, as now
the compelling transfusing heat from sun and coffee
impel me to write this pas de deux ballet down in words, a/k/a,
only a love poem

8:32am

There are four chambers in the heart
The right atrium receives oxygen poor blood
When you left I was smothered
Somehow the words from your lips had enough power to poison the air I inhaled
Leaving me struggling and aching to be clean of you and all our memories
The right ventricle pumps oxygen poor blood to the lungs
The pain of your absence spread like a virus in my life
My teachers were spouting information but none of it was teaching me
How to love myself again
The left atrium receives oxygen rich blood
I threw out the cigarettes you left on my desk and I rinsed you out of my hair. I got up early and drank my tea outside and embraced the cold air. The wind, so clean and un dirtied by your empty words and sticky promises, that its almost tangible.
The left ventricle pumps oxygen rich blood to the body
Six months gone and I'm not reaching for you anymore. No longer
Do I see you in my wrinkled sheets or the scuffs on my converse
I'm a lot lighter now
No longer do I have to carry your sad angry anxious dead weight on my sleeve
No longer do I have to use band aids to cover my wrists, but now to cover the scrapes on my knees from climbing mountains higher than I could've dreamed
And I've fallen in love with someone new
Myself.
She's great, thanks for asking.

So the play is over
After running for a year.
We had our ups and downs,
Our ins and outs,
Our highs and lows...
But that wasn't enough to keep on
Any longer.
You put on a smile and
Played your part convincingly.
I guess you really are a theater kid,
Because you made it feel so real.

I can't trace back the jagged timeline,
No matter how hard I try.
The acts all blur together -
There is no true beginning or end.
The only thing tangible and real
Is the pain,
And the scar you left behind.
To me, it's a severed ventricle
That will never heal.
To you, it's a stained napkin
To toss in the trash as you walk by.

Maybe method acting my role
Was the wrong approach.
My script told me to be
Your *****,
Your angel,
Your therapist,
But I just wanted to be your love.
I was never able to be
The perfect ***** that you wanted.
The kind of girl who
Actually stayed a girl.
I tricked myself into thinking
That I was finally good enough for someone.
I stared into the mirror
Until I convinced myself that
I was a beautiful monster.

"And I will always love you."
You listen to Dolly's when your heart is breaking,
And to Whitney's when you're ready to move on.
Some of us, however,
Stay stuck in limbo.
I can't push against the dusk
And get to the morning
If I can never trust again.
You built a city of lies
At my feet,
And the walls have yet to crumble.

And so, we take a bow
To our friends and family.
We exit, gripping a bouquet
Of dry and tattered roses.
You've taken the liberty
To give up and leave.
You're shedding the burden,
Peeling off the old, crusty skin.
I wasn't worth the trouble and effort,
I suppose.

I want to leave too,
But all the world will be the same stage.
I can't give up and leave
Unless I give up on the world itself.

Take my heart
Cardium carpal
Impossible to hold in both hands
In every glorious piece
Valve, ventricle, artery
Pulsing, pulsing — but no blood
Not pink, not red but grey,
Grey matter, but no matter

Take care not to lack a hole by
Ebon ivory of your skeletal hands,
Pulsing, pulsing — but no blood
Only bone grasping endocrine glands
Blood eagled atrium across your palms
Venae cavae hollowed hands.

I die a little bit inside each time
you offer an explanation for my
self,
   stubbed heart [popped out of sync]
   dips toward the ground and
   flutters to a silence

a still, empty blue presiding over
the world at large tonight, permeated
by plumes of white
(from the scrambled heads of dreamers)

nothing to hold against your
fiery facade, flaming formidable
fits of brilliance blazing before
my flustered eyes

and why do we cease to
contract, left ventricle?

to start up again and enjoy
it that much more (the second
time around)

In me, you are- wet and thick;
I wish to rub you between my *******.

I can feel you, in me, taking your course,
Driving my muscles to pump.
Oh how steady; sturdy; rhythmic you are.
You understand what it means to be muscular.

Right side
******* in anti-air.
Force a change in me
Until I can breathe what you have to offer.

Left side
Marrying life to the rest of my person.
Each Ventricle is built as follows:
Low to the ground is strong
But the heavens of what you stake,
Quake weak and deathly .

A process larger than the width of my sorrows
And holding me together as I fall apart. Vividly-
I picture: you are, sweet and damp, in me.
Driving my muscles to pump
Coursing too fast to fathom
like a mighty stream of ***** from a toddlers mouth.

Oh how balanced; holy; constant you are.

there’s always been a certain feeling
quite difficult to name—

discomfort, most likely,
or a vague,
blurry,
unhurried sense of fear.

a worry
that perhaps you can tell
that the floor was swept
and the carpet vacuumed
only minutes before your arrival ,

anxiety
making suppositions
about your x-ray vision
and delicate opinions.

perhaps you can see
the layers of sweat and blood
behind every painted wall,

perhaps you can hear the sound
of arguments and sweet nothings
seeping up from the floorboards.

i’m sure you mean well,
that you’ve brought some sort of lasagna
and cheesecake for dessert,

yet i cannot shake the feeling
that you are invaders
from a foreign land,
here to take
and take
and take
and take
everything your eyes land on.

this shakiness is formidable,
this unraveling so easy to do,
but i am not one to succumb
to anxiety’s follies—

so i open the door anyway
dissect the chambers of my heart,
throw open the shutters,
offering every bit of my soul,

my voice echoing
off every beam and wall and ventricle,
the word soaring into your ears:

“welcome!”

Baby,
     I
           think that
      maybe,
We've ****** up.
    Cause we've been force fed such fractured fallacies like,  
A Jewish zombie who is his own father,  
A chosen people, and immortality.
       Oh and did you know slavery was OK?
        How about ****?
Yeah the problem with an endless line of orphans is the exponential loss of the truth of our cosmic dead-beat dad.
                                  Well now,
The hand that feeds has fallen short, with the founding fathers roll in their graves.
Whilst silly sheep support Disillusioned delusions dressed,
in
Red White and Blue,


Wait for their cue, because
The Republic
is being held at gun point, with modern Gestapos ready and willing for the killing.
The final days of momma democracy await.

Zealous jealous and out for blood, with a cross across their chests as they proclaim; "IN HIS NAME, WE SMITE YE!"

Now thats just jurisdiction to judge the jury.

And now

She showers us
With this Vampiric ecstasy,
As they mask our mothers ****** under the banner of God.

As they
             wipe away the blood gushing,
      from the slit throat of
Lady Liberty,
with whats left of our crumbling
Constitution,
only to wrap her in a once glorious flag, now despoiled with
The poisonous blessings bought by the pontiff of flame
whose pseudo fame is a sign
that this clandestine facade will end soon.

Yet still we must deal with another contradiction, another, convoluted convulsion of consciousness severing our ties with that
good ol' American dream.

So watch them promote our fall, greeting hell-fire half-heartedly, these sanctimonious masses amass, a menacing masquerade.

See they've paraded on the moral high ground pointing the finger without the grounds to back themselves up, aside from a dusty old book and the rusty rapturous moans of defiled men.

As chosen children I chide you, for archaic superstition must be left behind, a fact that most may find, a tad bit unacceptable, even while you drive your SUV's and gorge on Mickey D's, while you gun down doctors and destroy human intelligence. Remember the dark ages? Guess who made them dark.

Your men on top ****** male prostitutes and tap dance in the mens room, denying every allegation; look, this is a nation stuck on revelation hell bent on escaping damnation.

And they say I'm the Devil! One worth the reapers embrace, those carcinogen caricatures carried by the book.
When fear rules their hearts,
Destruction and War
beget by their weakness.
                          Now all I say is throw it all away, Live, ****, and Love. Just imagine a world free, free from terror, war, hate, separation, and segregation.
             Imagine finally clogging that cancerous ventricle our country holds so dear.
   Imagine the end to a crutch,
A spiritual mod,
Imagine a world,
Without the illusion of God.

I must have been at least eight years old
when I started playing doctor in my garage,
using long gardening tools as skeletons
and drawing scattered veins with colored
pencils on sketches of the human brain.
I used to set up little name tags on the floorboards.
My parents had a plastic bin full of sticks
to help the plants grow straight that I used
as pointers, attacking each ventricle
of this made up heart with detail. I'd examine
my imaginary person and tell the entire
classroom just how to fix them up right.

Now, I'm twenty one and I must have tried
to fix you up at least ten different times.
I molded you with my hands like soil,
nurturing you with soft kisses and coffee
in the mornings. I'd even try to pull your nightmares
out from the roots, tie up the frayed ends,
and throw them into the compost. I used
my own spine like those pointers to help you
grow up straight, grow up different than all
the memories you'd blurt out like bubbles
when trying to breathe underwater. Memories
like falling asleep accidentally on the bus
just to be awoken by the driver back at the station,
the way that pity candy bar must have tasted
as you waited in a nasty plastic seat
for your mom who wasn't even worrying.
I tried to dissect you from the outside in.
Read your body like it was directions, but
I'm still just a kid in a too big overalls
playing doctor out in my garage.

You are bigger than the pretend desks
with the broken pencils inside. You are more
fragile than the yarn that I would loop
around my neck like a fake teacher's badge.
You have way too many pieces for me to count
on a skeleton, but if you let me I will try
to memorize them all, label them
with sidewalk chalk, put them together
again with Elmer's glue. If you let me,
I will let you slip on my nostalgia
like a patient's gown, let you relive
a tiny moment of the childhood that was stolen
even if it's just for a little while, even
if it's just pretend.

From the abyss of despair,disdain and desertion
           My angel ,my harbinger my reason to blosssom and bloom
           you hatched my abeynce and gloom...
           Now tht i can see the verdant and braeth the ambience
           i can barely be thankful enough to the cryptic  zephyr


           The rapunzel who led me down her long dark ravishing locks
           to the respite of the embittered recluse ....
           You r my guiding redolent mermaid who
           help me conquer the vast cerulean deep oceans of grief...
        
          Without your love my life is just like a tree without leaves
          my heart without beats,ohh my dear i don't knw whr it is,
          in my auricle or ventricle but i know it is within my heart and will be forevr for u
          which rythyms my soul by giving energy to confront this curious world
  
          I can get the vistage of love from your comely eyes but how simply
          you just deny by phoxy lines from your red luscious lips.......
          please,please don't play with my emotions it just kills me day and night in motion

          My eyes are wet,lips are dried heart is broken, dreams are scattered but still
          there is a hope that you will give me another scope.........
          and i promise i will not let my love for you go in vain untill the last drop of blood flows in my vein.........

It was not in the road
that took me there
but the way my heart
always remained the same
rushing through college corridors,
open dissection tables,
woodwork poetry breathren.

Indestructible construction
of these cerebral plates
left me the mind of a surgeon
and the heart of a poet.

In the cold operating room
they cut open his chest-
blood gushing out and I could
see why sometimes a little hurt
could cause a lot of noise.
Ventricle, atrium.
A nick that ricocheted,
a word that spelled
goodbye.

There was a rhythm in his heart
and for once I could feel
synchronicity was never so beautiful;
almost teary-eyed
I could find those verses
lost between the veins,
quietude pumping out slowly.

Lost in the mistranslation
of his chest
till the nurse said

"Doctor, your patient's dying"

The house, when empty,
feels like a moseleum.
Everything is dark.
It is strange, how literally I can feel the heart tear.
Pericardium and myocardium,
ripping with the slow, tough **** of time and waiting,
atrium and ventricle split.
Far away my brain turns in on itself
as I stare at the candy on the road,
left from a Christmas parade,
Defined by the things its left behind,
though they lie unwanted.

My soul has fled to the wilderness
birth pangs of grief beginning,
prepared to deliver a stillborn heart,
As another star falls out of my sky.

It will go dark, I know.
One by one fall, without wishes to bring them back.
I stare at my sister's golden hair
and dread the day when she will be the one lying white,
bloodless
in a hospital bed.
Oh my mother, Oh my father,
are you to fall away, too?

Light. I scream, I need light.
But I will not throw bits of glass at the sky
to pretend I have re-lit the stars.

The love I felt for u
Got lost in time....
Coz let's face the truth.....
It was always me looking for u
And u were nowhere to find
Since debroglie said for everything,
Love must also be a symmetry  and
Half heart can't make something ....
Just a sign.
Imagine only one auricle and ventricle pumping to save our vital signs.

I carried you on earthen wings
and when we began
the feathers that fell sprouted
fish which flew within our trail.

Milkweeds grew from the red-soiled banks. Their tops
spout like tiny fountains. The Birds bathed within
pink milkweed pools.

Downstream
a chained woman cried,
her blouse coated in sweat and her arms
pulled tight.
Her face lifted towards the sky,
and her mouth dripped thick saliva.

A broken windmill
floated in the gusts of wind
And the current flung us into space.

You gripped my neck
and ran your hands
to my chest. Your fingers stopped
at the pulsation
and you delivered a pin
to my left ventricle.

Poised and clenching we watched
the continents turn grey

Intertwine our pulmonaries
Pull tight, tie together our coronaries

My superior vena cava resting near yours
Hear that, the sound of opening ventricle doors

Beautiful looking aortas fixed
Winding together as a double helix

This heart of mine will skip a beat
Just so my arrhythmia and yours might meet

This ticker will only continue to tick
If next to yours it may stick

Not a murmur because of bad health
A murmuring of loves bountiful wealth

Atrium to atrium, heart to heart:
Blood's continual pumping, so long as our valves never part.

My heart was filled with daisies whose heads sprung from each ventricle.

Their stems creeped through my arms and I radiated purity.

Then a new seed was sewn into the cavity of my chest

And thorns grew from my body, now nobody can touch me.