The Girl Kept a Hope Chest at the end of her bed.

In anticipation of years to come

when Noble, Shiny-Toothed Knight ‘n Armor comes.

So many years in waiting for so many more years

(she’d think)

of marital bliss, home making

china in the cabinet, peaceful smiling

pictures on the mantle, a sweet slick building’s siding

white rugs and a large flat television set.

Filled it.

Packed neatly with every kitchen and home appliance; dust buster, hand mixer, charming tin frog shaped egg yolk separator, calls home from work every day at the lunch hour, two-in-one air freshener and humidifier, eight setting blender, cutting boards carved from select maple wood, tender sexless kisses from a man with a bowl cut, ken doll kids and barbie doll dress up days, wrinkle-proof bed sheets and floral throw pillows.

As if peace is all she can imagine these days

What has happened to the heart? That thick region from whence utter aches and quickened pulses or blood run cold; It’s symbolism weakens day by day. Gone is that mythical notion that the center of our being, our humanness comes from the heart. Now romantics pine after the brain, explore it’s mysterious regions as if now we have truly discovered the secret lair of the self. We expect, by scans and careful pokes of the scalpel to unfold the enigma of the human mind, having passed by the mystery of the body with relative ease, rather un-eventful in retrospect. 

But the firing of neurons fuels me a little less still then the conversely sweating and shivering torso which is inhabited by vital - if not intellectual - organs. (True the gut has it’s own suite of neurological tricks, but would one honestly look towards, say, the chambers of a ruminant, wonderous and powerful as those cavernous sploog chambers are, for an show of brilliant thought?) I, in my diverse, if not to long or adverse life, have not escaped the old cliché of a broken or aching heart. Though it’s possible I could have inherited the clinically assigned heart “flutter” which my grandmother had, I believe also that emotion or spiritual turbidity have on occasion been the cause for my heart to actually skip a beat. Lovers many did quicken my pulse (true, by dint of the brain, but also by vital work of the heart), enemies or horrors have turned my blood cold and chest steely stiff. I yet love the heart, and yet ponder it’s mysteries most eagerly. And I hope, for my humanity’s sake, that my brain never overtakes it.

Love songs, like cigarettes, do not actually reduce stress. They’re merely bumps on our way to salvation or death.

The brindled mare did court

a forest spayad, not so toothsome

as she, but indeed, in possession of verve.

You are strong and sweet, like mountain persimmons.

Even now, as I wade into the memory of your fire and stillness, my heart cannot leave you.

apoetreflects:

“For the poet, language is a structure of the external world.  The speaker is in a situation in language; he [she] is invested by words.  They are prolongations of his [her] senses, his [her] pincers, his [her] antennae, his [her] spectacles.  He [She] maneuvers them from within; he [she] feels them as if they were his [her] body; he [she] is surrounded by a verbal body which he [she] is hardly conscious of and which extends his [her] action upon the world. 

The poet is outside language.  He [She] sees the reverse side of words, as if he [she] did not share the human condition and as if he [she] were first meeting the work as a barrier as he [she] comes toward men.  Instead of first knowing things by their name, it seems that first he [she] has a silent contact with them, since, turning towards the other species of thing which for him [her] is the word, touching words, testing them, fingering them, he [she] discovers in them a slight luminosity of their own and particular affinities with the earth, the sky, the water, and all created things.”

—Jean-Paul Sartre, from What is Literature? and Other Essays, 1965.

If wishes were fishes we’d all have impressive aquariums. But I only remember staring down the big one. At first we were stoic, comfortably settling into our mexican stand-off. Him behind his glass, me behind my own. Me on the carpet and he in the water. A big fucker he was, one to be considered weightily. I know of this kind, I thought, ‘this one warrants diligent observation and well planned execution’. But I fumbled my grip (I should really quit noodling). Like a dream quickly dissolving, one moment I was relishing the anticipation of the catch. The next moment, interrupted by a blur of invading reality. There it was, busted glass and flopping on the floor, a gash in against the grain of his muscle. (Do fish bleed? Or was the water his spilt tithe to tragedy?)

I patiently asked the aquarium store owner in chinatown, “Ought I to get him a new tank, or would he just float (no longer able to sink or swim)?”

The elephant eyed the mouse suspiciously. Discreetly, but most definitely taking note of every twitch or blurred dash.

“It’s not that I fear the mouse…” Still sidlong staring while mumbling toward the group of guests gathered round the wet bar, “But that I cannot but help to think that you sapiens are onto something. Why should I trust such a creature? No time to slow down and consider, no ability to stop and refrain. Who can trust one who will not sit still, will climb and scratch and nest - fornicate - without hesitation?!”