04/11/10 Something I’m Uncertain About

It’s hard to keep

only love in your heart

when the whole world is blossoming,

dying,

brothers fighting for scraps

from a master’s table,

the ozone coming back to whole,

wild things rummaging in the park;

silence,

violence,

mania,

the return of hope,

defeat,

disrepair,

and decay.

Shit, to keep all that in the heart

the heart may burst in outrage,

beating indefinitely,

stopping,

and beating only out of curiosity again,

stopping,

and then beating again,

it’s thump like the shredding

of gnarled teeth.

The heart,

you see,

it’s not good or bad –

it’s insolent,

choosing to go on when everything else

suggests it not.

It says “no” to our every certainty.

It says,

“breath with me… breath with me, stranger,

and I will decide when the music stops.”