4:51 pm | 26 June 2003 | heart's a drunk driver

Here's a lameduck love poem for drunks (for Baharehbat's "What's a Heart?" project). And tomorrow morning, boyohboy are you guys gonna be happy. A special guest spot is comin' yo way. love you. clm.

My heart is a drunk driver
     testing the limits of the road:
     My heart is driving with one eye squeezed shut
     between yellow lines of endless waver.

My heart is an accordion with a busted bellows.
     Look: it’s a wheezy heart.
     It’s an asthmatic song.

My heart is a compass at the North Pole:
     Here’s a heart
     spinning and spinning.
     Here’s a ceaselessly dizzy heart. Here’s a heart
     that’s gotten to where it has pointed all along.

My heart is a stroke victim that knows what it wants to say
but says the wrong thing always.
     "Loaf!" it blurts.
     Love, it meant to say.

My heart is chock-full of malfunction.
My heart is doing its best.

I am careless.
     Here’s a heart with “return to—” taped to its underside.
     Here’s a heart that’s been left in too many taxis.

Don’t give your heart to anyone.
Treat it like a jar:
     Yours is full of Pacific waters
     & mine is mostly Lake Michigan
     with a tablespoon of Loch Ness
     and a quarter-cup of the Black Sea:

So share or trade half of your waters with me
     & love is a chemical change & a mystery
     we could end up with a bluegreen love
     or a saline love
     or a mostly freshwater love
     held in our own jars.

A bad love is shaken
& a good love is stirred
And it only takes one glass
     To get to where we’re going:

So a toast to a love that’s doing its best
     & a toast to a love we sip out of jars
     & a toast to a love that turns water into wine
     and my heart into a drunk driver