WHAT YOU HEAR

What you hear is my heart,
the pulsing thing that fills my chest,
overflows my throat,
sinks its red mass deep in my groin,
crowds out my lungs so all they can do
is pull in short little breaths.
I want my mind to go away
and let my heart have this day,
to feel the strangeness of joy,
to walk fast and far and click
into the rhythm where poems and lovers live,
this beat that could be your heart or mine
or both together or the thump of the world turning
or the slow whoosh of stars wheeling around us.
And finding you there in the timeless measure,
I sprinkle you with words as you smear me with paint,
and rubbing into each other we merge
and become each other's art.


© 2003 by Richard W. Todd

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