The Heart is Beat Options

[Jackaroe]

The Heart is Beat

I feel like piercing my heart with a needle
Thinner than the thread it can hold,
And prick and prick this bloody beat of mine
Till the wave of distant drumming slows.
This scarlet flesh will dry and rot
and the love inside will cry,
As the walls shrink and shrivel and knot
Into a chamber where feeling can die.
Flaking and peeling, lifeless and cold,
No more a bag of blood to squeeze;
Just a heart in ashen form waiting
to be dismembered by a breeze.
And without this pump--this air-stuffed pump,
I'll surely follow suit and pale.
This liquor of mine, thick and red,
With you gone, life will taste so stale.
Beautifully bland and spiritless,
A gray world moving without a pulse,
Lament now, my heart, and thump severe--
For tomorrow, this sound I shall never again hear.