by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or martinantonsmith@gmail.com
Sometimes a dove is in your heart, but a cat is lurking – so it can’t come out right now.
Sometimes your heart is a flower unfolding, but the sun didn’t rise today.
Sometimes your heart is a drum, but no one can find the drumsticks anywhere.
Sometimes your heart has been stood on, squashed, flattened – but it’s really just waiting for resurrection.
Most of the time writing about…
Your own heart…
Or Someone else’s heart…
Namely it being broken etc –
Means you have probably written a fucking awful thing.
Because you’ve risked being just another bland asshole talking of ‘love”.
And it is because I know this, & so I let it be known, and I almost never write of things of the heart,
That you will know I mean it.
I promise you these are not ‘bland assholes love lyrics type 17a clause iii’.
I used to say you were cold hearted & perhaps I was right –
But to say ‘you’re cold hearted’ is a C- analysis not the A+ one.
For is it ‘cold-heartedness’ or is it ‘correct survival mechanisms of a battle hardened nervous system?’
But on that level, I know that I was more than ‘cold hearted’ too.
I hope both our hearts can still sing after all these years.
Perhaps a heart can still sing to itself while no one – including ourselves – is looking.
But perhaps our hearts sing to each other without us knowing.
This might happen while we are both asleep,
Perhaps out hearts are laughing, joking, dancing & drinking away.
They don’t care that we – the earth strapped ego people – no longer talk or see each other.
Our hearts know we are both like children and don’t know any better,
Than to always get in the way of ourselves & always ruin ‘what might be’.
Our hearts laugh at us, knowing we are such fools –
They know we’re missing out on a hell of a party down here.
And once in a million tries, the two dancing drunk hearts will make a breakthrough.
The human beings attached hear them party,
In that half awake half asleep dreamscape,
For a brief few moments we both feel that the other one is still there.
Yes this is a glorious thing,
But as I’m a greedy bastard, I’d still to see you in the flesh again.
But I don’t know if you will ever allow it.
But why should our disembodied hearts have all the fun?
It’s a simple good argument don’t you think?
And I know I can’t do anything right now other than cajole a few words from the dictionary,
Ask for some of the best ones to fall out,
Then re-order themselves perfectly,
Just to impress you a little.
I wonder if you will one day ever read this?
And I just overheard both of our hearts talking to each other while I was drowsy,
During the party they went outside for a quiet pow-wow,
I heard one of them say this to the other, & the other one nodded in agreement:
All they need to do is clink a glass, raise a smile, make some eye contact, and say hello.
The hearts are right – It is we fools that makes ‘matters of the heart’ become unsolved mysteries.
As a surprise – let’s be wise and follow their advice.
It could happen.
Anton Martin Smith Writer 