TELEPHONE LINE 6

Look, I have an arrhythmic heart-
song and do you want to hear it or not?
Its’ melody middles somewhere between tear (verb) 
and tear (noun), as in, yes, behind these mirrored 
sunglasses there exists one, OK fine, now two — 
and TEAR, like the t-shirt, the bramble thorns, the way 
a bat can cleave the air of the nightfield. I can hear them 
both down in the renovated basement, seesawing across 
the thin ditch that separates the holding of oneself 
from the dislocation 
of one's shoulder. Like, who was I to take this blanked
page pressed from the fascia of an old birch, marr it
with a song I can barely hum along with and not expect 
to be slapped? But then who was I to 
be without it? The song, I mean, and the slap, the rippling 
silence that followed.