Artless

is my heart. A stranger berry there never was, tartless. Gone sour in the sun, in the sunroom or moonroof, roofless. No poetry. Plain. No fresh, special recipe to bless. All I’ve ever made with these hands and life, less substance, more rind. Mostly rim and trim, meatless but making much smoke in the old smokehouse, no less. Fatted from the day, overripe and even toxic at eve. Nonetheless, in the end, if you must know, if I must bend, waistless, to that excruciation. No marvel, no harvest left me speechless, yet I find myself somehow with heart, aloneless. With heart, fighting fire with fire, fightless. That loud hub of us, meat stub of us, beating us senseless. Spectacular in its way, its way of not seeing, congealing dayless but in everydayness. In that hopeful haunting (a lesser way of saying in darkness) there is silencelessness for the pressing question. Heart, what art you? War, star, part? Or less: playing a part, staying apart from the one who loves, loveless.