Dear Heartbeat, v. 5

[From the envelope…]

Dear Heartbeat,

I’m sure you had the fifth

jokes in mind when you thought

about the fourth.  To not

disappoint, enclosed

you’ll find your fifth.

Have another, on me.

If not, with me, at least.

Call this one the poetry edition.

Every voice finds,

eventually,

its own medium.

M---

Heartbeat,

It is said that one should be careful

re: what one seeks.  Or asks for.

Or grasps for.  W/r/t

grasping, one instantly

thinks straws, but of course

one can also grasp for a ledge,

a manatee, a sliver

of information, a slice

of communication, a port

in a storm.

“Why am I so afraid of loneliness?

My soul is a baby wolf.”

“I cannot bring a world quite round,

Although I patch it as I can.”

Two poets – the former Young,

Stevens the latter – saying the same thing,

60 years apart.  I think you know

this but all poets are thieves.  They steal

from every source they can find

to steal from, but mainly? they steal

from other poets.  The art of

appropriation, or recklessness,

if you will.

The world of belles lettres is such

an ugly place.

One would be right (writing)

to wonder, where will this lead,

this amalgamation polka of letters,

paths, manatees, platypi, paths,

seeking, wondering, wandering,

appropriation, recklessness, “the vivid

transparence that you bring

is peace.”  (Stevens,

again.)

If I could say,

I would.

Tell me what

you think, you say.

You first, I’m

inclined to say.

Inclined, maybe, but I recline

instead to my normal stance of

how much can I say how fast?

Guard yourself, you say,

and I – infantile in my emotions,

feeble, forlorn – immediately

joke it in my head to

Gird thy loins!

Which is, of course, vaguely different. 

Too much Vonnegut, not

enough Tolstoy, most

likely to blame.

“That I may reduce the monster to

Myself, and then may be myself

In face of the monster, be more than part

Of it, …

Being the lion in the lute

Before the lion locked in stone.”

You will always know what I think,

what I feel, a thing,

of things as they are.

The most beautiful sea

Our most beautiful days

And the most beautiful words I wanted to tell you…

Again, the vivid, if overly so,

transparence that you bring to me

is a peaceful, building, waxing,

waning, a tide, the flow of the beat

of the heart.

It is easy to feel safe around you,

to continue to want to wander

your halls and chambers,

considering each a new path, each

its own A B C of being.

Letters keep working their way in,

it seems.  Seemingly…

Til anon---

M---