The Figurative Heart

by Billy Burgos

We blame the heart so often.
We ask it to bear our guilt like
a wet bag of sand, then to hold
those small boxes of infatuation.

We ask the heart to lie to us
right behind the request to keep
the tune of our spirit playing on.
Yet when it lies, we blame that muscle
for each remembered deception.

At this red hour, with the darkening
city unrolling slowly like a dirty rug,
there is no figurative heart. There is
only this-and-now, the entire machine.

Even the threading of streetlights that
appear to lead off into nothingness eventually
end and come back. The night always brings back.
And maybe another -the heart only

speaks through the juried soul,
that invisible conduit that can bear nothing.
Like faith it is only an assured expectation,
something not-yet-beheld. We cannot
call it a liar, we can only call it god.
 

Catch Billy at the Poesia Para La Gente event September 7.