Since you said you’d stay a month,

and stayed three hours;

I’ve not been entirely committed. Just

my heart

went on the lam, a soft fugitive,

hanging so low

in the Starbucks parking lot,

saying he’s at the office, a decaffeinated criminal,

my heart stole a muffin, bums change with a hard luck sign

at Hollywood and Vine, dials long-extinct 212 numbers,

shoots foul shots alone, compares notes with no one,

my heart

watches porn at the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel,

beats over fast,

gets disgusted with itself and overeats,

sips tequila through a vein he calls a straw;

kid’s stuff, victimless crimes in a tepid time,

but enough for the Authority

to take note.

‍

So—they want to commit my heart upstate

for observation. Who’s zooming who,

you may rightly ask. But they’re looking for

my heart

with a cute little Jarvik straightjacket.

My heart

in a fist-sized trench coat, smoking a cigarette like an artery,

on a nostalgic trip, watching carefree kids at a local

schoolyard,

a sad small man,

trying to find the beat that she skipped to,

then skipped like a broken record,

then skipped like a stone

on the water out of town.

‍

There, with his left ventricle pressed

against the fence unbored, watching infinite games

of rock paper scissors shoot, the Authority finds my heart

and places him under cardiac arrest,

shipping him asap upstate in a valentine’s-shaped ice chest—

where he is committed entirely, takes pills with meals,

bpm within target range, writes me in crayon

from a mandatory art class, requesting

his black and blue cardigan,

misses me, misses her,

writes poems halfway through,

and dedicates them to cities he’s never been to,

my heart

plotting his return to a world diminished

by her ineradicable presence.

‍

‍

‍

^{Source: About Time: Poems (Akashic Books 2025)}