cooling the rage...
Apr. 12th, 2009 04:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glass_icarusTwo poems for today!
Concerning Starling's Law of The Heart
"...the critical factor controlling stroke volume is the pre-load or degree of stretch of the cardiac muscle cells just before they contract."
--Marieb's Human Anatomy and Physiology
House a pump in four chambers,
arteries and veins for pipes, valves
for valves, pacemaker a tap
that won't quit running. Let it.
This is the sound of hope, deaf
to the world, which in any case
has grown fond of complaining
to itself. Forget the world.
The matter at hand is plumbing--
good plumbing, too--the kind
that won't clog on its own grief
and biles, nor corrode from
the sour spillage of anyone else.
Say one day disease embraces you
like a beloved, and won't let go:
Until death do us part. To you,
it will feel that the pump in your
chest has plunged straight out
the window, and of course
it's a great loss--it's everything.
But your heart won't break
or burst. Though it may not
be whole exactly, it will work--
will beat every day of your life
in order to pump down to the last
blessed drop all the blood
presented to it, and even a flood
would make it work just that much
harder. You can depend on it
by law. Frank-Starling's Law.
Consider starlings, how they sing so
in their river oak that turning at night
from the darkness of Richmond to
Montrose, the blast of fortitude and joy
knocks the breath from your chest,
sets your dumb heart throbbing:
What is there to say? Consider
it said. If my heart were more,
more would be laid at your feet.
-- Erin Grace Brooks
***
Nocturne in C
Because these are not the nights of empty hands,
because these are not the nights of dreams galloping
like gasoline fire over blue tar,
I wish you could see what I see
when I look at you,
I wish I could give you
the landscape in my soul, invisible
as the wishes I follow to your mouth --
an ocean mounting within me, the drowsy foam
and drone of velvet waters washing us closer
and farther apart, always both at once,
murmur of umber, bloodwings beating in bone.
You cannot see the waves breaking against welted shoals,
but in the rocking of our chair, maybe you hear
the whispering of the sea, biting acetylene,
or cries of tern and gull, brine-stung; maybe you hear
the uncaged waters gasping against hasp and hull,
salt fumes hissing, scalps flensed from bile-dark brine.
In your shirt's rustling, I hear sailcloth in wind,
ropes lashed and pulling against the mast.
In our chair's rasp against pine boards, I hear
the creak of oarlocks, a broken scull scraping against keel.
I hear spume soaking a bowsprit crisped with salt,
as I rock into your torso, your human shore.
Come nearer, nearer,
for I want to see what you see --
Dress me in burlap and bone,
wrap me in musk and dulse, in human moss,
shine me a lighthouse's scalding gold;
comfort me with wine and sole, come to me
with a severed branch of coral, a fistful of wet wings;
sing me the gauze of dusk and salt, nights full of sulfurous foam,
lead me through the narcotic dark to a bed
of coats, your stubbled face grazing my throat,
for I want to feel your eyelids touching my lips when I sleep,
I want to feel the bones of your silence pressing against my own.
-- Suji Kwock Kim
Concerning Starling's Law of The Heart
"...the critical factor controlling stroke volume is the pre-load or degree of stretch of the cardiac muscle cells just before they contract."
--Marieb's Human Anatomy and Physiology
House a pump in four chambers,
arteries and veins for pipes, valves
for valves, pacemaker a tap
that won't quit running. Let it.
This is the sound of hope, deaf
to the world, which in any case
has grown fond of complaining
to itself. Forget the world.
The matter at hand is plumbing--
good plumbing, too--the kind
that won't clog on its own grief
and biles, nor corrode from
the sour spillage of anyone else.
Say one day disease embraces you
like a beloved, and won't let go:
Until death do us part. To you,
it will feel that the pump in your
chest has plunged straight out
the window, and of course
it's a great loss--it's everything.
But your heart won't break
or burst. Though it may not
be whole exactly, it will work--
will beat every day of your life
in order to pump down to the last
blessed drop all the blood
presented to it, and even a flood
would make it work just that much
harder. You can depend on it
by law. Frank-Starling's Law.
Consider starlings, how they sing so
in their river oak that turning at night
from the darkness of Richmond to
Montrose, the blast of fortitude and joy
knocks the breath from your chest,
sets your dumb heart throbbing:
What is there to say? Consider
it said. If my heart were more,
more would be laid at your feet.
-- Erin Grace Brooks
***
Nocturne in C
Because these are not the nights of empty hands,
because these are not the nights of dreams galloping
like gasoline fire over blue tar,
I wish you could see what I see
when I look at you,
I wish I could give you
the landscape in my soul, invisible
as the wishes I follow to your mouth --
an ocean mounting within me, the drowsy foam
and drone of velvet waters washing us closer
and farther apart, always both at once,
murmur of umber, bloodwings beating in bone.
You cannot see the waves breaking against welted shoals,
but in the rocking of our chair, maybe you hear
the whispering of the sea, biting acetylene,
or cries of tern and gull, brine-stung; maybe you hear
the uncaged waters gasping against hasp and hull,
salt fumes hissing, scalps flensed from bile-dark brine.
In your shirt's rustling, I hear sailcloth in wind,
ropes lashed and pulling against the mast.
In our chair's rasp against pine boards, I hear
the creak of oarlocks, a broken scull scraping against keel.
I hear spume soaking a bowsprit crisped with salt,
as I rock into your torso, your human shore.
Come nearer, nearer,
for I want to see what you see --
Dress me in burlap and bone,
wrap me in musk and dulse, in human moss,
shine me a lighthouse's scalding gold;
comfort me with wine and sole, come to me
with a severed branch of coral, a fistful of wet wings;
sing me the gauze of dusk and salt, nights full of sulfurous foam,
lead me through the narcotic dark to a bed
of coats, your stubbled face grazing my throat,
for I want to feel your eyelids touching my lips when I sleep,
I want to feel the bones of your silence pressing against my own.
-- Suji Kwock Kim
