Sometimes the heart
is like a nautilus -
an involuted spiral,
slippery with nacreous
veneer of pearl enamel,
smooth as silk
on labyrinthine inner walls,
the ocean's lullaby a constant,
muffled echo from outside:
"Let me in, I am your fate,
I will not be denied…"
Sometimes the heart
is like an octopus,
uncoiling from a rock-fissure,
extending all eight tentacles
like Hindu goddess Kali
to envelop unsuspecting prey
or probe the waters for a mate,
before retracting spiral arms
to lie in wait - arachnid
camouflaged by murky,
webless subaquatic niche.
Predators are chronic
malcontents, and prone
to melancholy; octopus,
as well as being predatory,
are also quarry;
and so my heart rejects
these semblances as false,
or too contrived,
and seeks a truer image
of itself, systolic-diastolic.
Tonight my heart
is like a sponge,
intimate with sea's caress,
to whom brine is the same as breath
because its life depends on this.
Only the most formidable diver
can disrupt their kiss,
a symbiosis with the deep
that ends with metazoan death.
The heart desires veracity,
a total absence of pretence,
sublimation of the sea's
polyphony within itself -
and nothing more than this,
and nothing less…