heartwood

by A.S. Coomer

       There is a price to opening one’s heart to beauty.
              —Jim Harrison

let the jazz initiate blow
those sour notes of learning
though the walls
are tabloid page thin
distance translates

the scales become
the disjointed melody
of a song that’s rolling
along the pink
& purple ripples
of the river on the tip
of your limestone tongue

       the artist & song title
       glint like sun on rapid
       memories shimmer
              to the surface
       roil like water over dam
       but recognition is a plastic
       jack-o’-lantern mask
       our wick whispers
       psalms of extinguishment

blues bloom in the fallow field of your chest
the songbird sleeping in the heartwood there wakes
some days aren’t tracked by the sun

✺

though the cup is cracked
it’ll hold all that we need

we’ve lived long enough now
to know our decades are lightning bugs
winking out in late summer’s twilight

all our clocks read 11:11
3:33 is a deeper hue of the same blue
all our palates more masterpiece
than what we’ve been working over
       for a lifetime
here’s a time-lapse of us blurring the lines
working the oil to death
diluting it with thinner, spit, & egg whites
we’re always pouring on the varnish
before the paint has time to dry
life for all us accidental impressionists
will never get museum space
will never sell for millions at christie’s
will end up going for nothing
       at a carrion estate auction
to be stored away in a backwoods storage unit
       where only roaches will stand & marvel
               appreciate what’s left
before the bolt is cut, the hasty appraisal made,
& our eventual burial in a gas station dumpster