O the hilly hellscape of the heart, heartsick, homesick, seasick, sick at sea and heart, whether waves or hills, the body flounders, heart spills, and the mind mutinies— mountains, it forms, impossible to scale. and I, still here, in the vale of half-apologies and hope half stale— Lo, the masochist returns to the sites of sorrow where old agonies infinitely unfurl in some grim tomorrow, future-past tense world— what a shame it is that we are human, what a shame that I am, I say, I declare or pray; I am tossing on an ocean of treachery— O the heart is hilly, hurt and has every hole patched up, every hatch latched, where every agony is stacked neatly, ever and never tossed about by the jostling kinetic world— chronically seasick and always at sea— some god, in its infinite forethought ought to have wrought us from some other matter than this—this mess of flesh— something that neither breaks nor wears away, impervious to the perturbations of a day. The vocal cords are grief-catchers, and all that’s caught is then exposed in a tiny museum of frail dispatchers, sinews stretched and heart enclosed— what a shame it is that we are fragile, what a shame, that I am, am human, all, every inch, what a shame.
This article appears in August 2017 Issue.
