It’s ugly,
The inside of a heart
Desperate

Shadows, nooks and crannies,
Pulsing

It looks like it wants
A David Attenborough voice-over
That thing
Inside of it
Where anything could be suddenly found
Peeping out
Or worse, nothing
In the pitiless caverns

What a red and black thing
To move all by itself
Rhythmic, but unfathomable
Warm, somehow inhuman
The big bad meet at the centre

It doesn’t stop, you know
Perhaps, sometimes it does
But it doesn’t want to

It would bring the end of everything
With its hunger, and go on
Pumping
Like a stupid horny dog
Pumping at itself
Against
Everything else

What is it so angry about
To go on living like that?
It’s doing it now
We can’t call that work, can we
And it’s not recreation
What is it doing?
What does it want?

Will it come to rest when it’s
Finally satisfied,
Will it give up crying and look around
At all the friends it has, that are
Happy enough just oozing
Just sitting still secreting
Is it the only-child in the
Jumble sale of ourselves,
Is it just too stubborn to
Shut up and go to bed

I would call it an animal
But I know too well, it is mine
And all its wants mine to see to
And all its mess my mess
And all its songs my songs
And all its holes
And empty parts my own
I would call it a beast
A strange flailing alien
But then I’d have to call being
A stone