David Flynn

THE HEART

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Right now my heart feels dead, so it's not a good time to write about this cliché.
My heart belongs to you. My heart is a restless wanderer. My heart goes out to the victim's family.
Mi Corazon.
But in reality my heart is a squshy thing that pumps blood. Looks like a vicious beet.
The Greeks guessed in their logical way that the heart was where the feelings began.
Other theories were the brain–probably right–, and the knee.
Get excited and the heart pumps, the knee grows week.
Have a knee. A Valentine card shaped like a knee.
We are talking about feelings, which the Romantics thought was how we should know the world.
Want it; it should be.
The Greeks talked about logic. The world was a logical system; know it through logic.
Leap of faith, averaged Kierkegaard.

I like to ramble, in case you didn't notice in this poem. That's how I know the world.
Walking down a narrow hall is not how you walk in the park, the sun, the dogs barking, the children
screaming.
My heart is dead, he said. That means I don't have any hope this morning, hope in general.
Nothing works.
Nobody likes me–isn't whining fun.

The heart is a cliché, but so is the head, the feet, the hands. Have a foot. Give me a broken tibular.
Feel. Think. But realize
nobody knows what we are doing.

David Flynn was born in the textile mill company town of Bemis, TN. His jobs have included newspaper reporter, magazine editor and university teacher. He has five degrees and is both a Fulbright Senior Scholar and a Fulbright Senior Specialist with an upcoming grant in Indonesia. His literary publications total more than one hundred and eighty. David Flynn's writing blog, where he posts a new story and poem every month, is at Writing–Flynn. His web site is at http://www.davidflynnbooks.com.