Whose heart makes noises
like the creaking of bending frozen milk?
We ignore the entrails, shut out like a dog in the yard,
until, lying in darkness,
the mind lands on a thought that’s not there –
like climbing stairs in the dark and finding oneself
unexpectedly at the top.
Inside, the organs, all boiling squirting chemicals
and twitching spasms, come panting and wagging
like the dog so sadly ignored,
left to bounce off himself until he goes crazy.
Have we come so far from the womb
that the language of the entrails sounds as foreign
as the vast hellish gurgling where the earth’s crust is thin?
I will lay my head upon your guts
after you’ve had a good meal.
I’ll watch the protozoans floating in my eyeballs.
I’ll listen to the original mammal language
as I would listen to the ocean in a shell.
written 1986