heart in a foxhole

there are times when I can't
feel my heart beating inside my chest.
it seems that the blood in my veins
backs up like a city-wide traffic jam
filled with blaring horns and red-faced
motorists in a rush to get
nowhere.

I listen, but there is no sound of the
constant thump thump.
it's one thing to lose your keys.
not even a reason to panic when you
lose your mind.
you can go on perfectly content being crazy.
but this dead feeling between my ribs
sends me searching.
I pull myself apart like a Cronenberg
scene spilling a cluttered mess of me
to the floor.

I have a lot more guts than I thought.
but where the hell is that fickle,
bastard heart of mine?
maybe it is my mind I've lost.
I start rummaging through the inside of
my whiskey-coated shell until finally,
tucked away between the aching
bones of my spine, I find that
barely beating mass of muscle.
hiding like a chicken-shit from the
battlefields of
everything.

but it's about time it started pulling
its weight around here.
my liver has handled sorrow for too long
and my dick is tired of dealing with love.
so I pull its cowardly, beating ass from
the foxhole of my spine and
throw him to the front-line.
face the blitzkrieg.
take a few bullets and
shards of shrapnel.
collect scars.
lose fights.
women.
lose it all and
die bleeding with a smile on
your face knowing you lived.


dale wilsey jr. (Tunkhannock, PA, 1984)