My heart is a cardinal

beating across the winds. It loves

for the sake of holy hell this world is

wondrous look at all those bluey greens

below me. It loves for the thrill of its feathers

shivering across the universal buzz and hum.

It loves because it is a holy thing to spot

a lighthouse gleaming from the corner

of one’s eye. Turn to face a set of deep

seated browns and say oh baby-

there you are.

…love always happens that way too, doesn’t it?

Some people take their hearts and store them in the top of a tower

with a moat made of laser beams and a dragon that breathes spermicides

They say never, not ever until the one truest of true loves reaches

the tipidy tip top will my heart wake up and get out of bed.

Not until then will my heart begin to live.

And that’s all good and fine, I suppose.

All I’m saying is your soul mate could be meandering

by with a mouth full of a relish and mustard hotdog

and you wouldn’t be able to see it from all the way up there.

He might be the most majestic ordinary fella with sauce on his

lips that you ever had the privilege of laying your eyes on.

That’s all I’m saying.

We all prefer different

shades of love.

My shade of love is a vital red,

too uppity and rowdy to be pent up there.

It wants to be shoulder to shoulder with streaky chaos.

It wants to skip down these city streets with a heart beaming

through flesh and clothes like a shiney magic rock against

sidewalks and taxi fumes and plastic litter.  It craves to fall and break

and rise with the sun. It shatters and melts and pounds and glows

for the pizza man and his round belly, and the brick walls with ivy

creeping up their ribs, for the first scuffed edge of new white shoes.

My heart, my heart! It reels like mad and then relaxes into awe of reddish

hughes in the evening. My heart is even more curious now than

when I was a child, damn it, my heart is a feral woman, hair

set to fire and she wants only to run  And I am here- well,

my body is here, chasing her about My flesh, trying to

keep her safe and together, My thighs, growing strong

carrying her truth. My eyes leaking every time

her heart string is tugged- she’s a leaker and

my ears strain. She loves to cackle and scream.

I love for the sake of loving because

that is how my stomach

ingests the universe.

I live my life rolling in dusty love

like an itchy stray dog.