ahem.

the heart is a spiral

the heart is a spiral, against which its just

beat presses, face first, beat's breath a clothing

fog upon the heart made window glass, less

flesh than constant display, heart's red show cleaved

to shaking rounds, spiralling suck, a rose

whose petals run into a pit, the grade

at which they plunge steep as the plunging grave.

to become the heart's beat--to will the cleave

of face to rose, the surge of breath that rises

against the tilting petal, the sigh's jut

through lungs and mouth a press no less, no less

than that of glass against the heart enclosed.

to breathe against the rose, to clothe

heartbeat in the half-death of breath, unbraid

the strand of rose and glass and heart, unclean

the blood veining up the words, leave unblessed

the point of this unseaming, adjust

the glass around the rose;

exhort the breath that out of the mouth rose

to touch nothing, not even glass, to watch the heart just

spiral, and if within there beats a dream unclothed,

to hold back even death before the unsplit heart, the great

spiralling red, to hold back even breath. cleave

away, cleave away those delirious things, worth less

than the spiral value of the glass,

by which the panting breath upon the rose

imagined itself. this distance just,

clothed

in the gradation

of cloven

sanctity, split, cleaved,

the beat from the heart, the beatless

heart, the heartless grade

of the slip of the rose

toward the clothing

grave, the infinite jut.

the just

grave, the retrograde

spiral, the cloth

of breath on the rose

fleeting, the raw glassless

heart stopped, cleaved

from its spiraling.