Heart

Heart

An electric eel invents an alphabet, PQRST and in each chamber a different picture, in each atrium a different angle, where does independence begin, my handwriting in comparison to the cardiogram, my heart, from whom does it learn to speak and beat and race, my heart bears more than my head, it lives by itself, no fussing, quite simple, water and bread, and nobody can touch it, forever in the cage of bones, so loud and so careful, a pause of two seconds would be suspicious, cardiogram, paper and needle, and on and on, it only knows the uphill, a Sisyphus, a beefcake, a workhorse, completely blind, naked mole, moves mountains and slurps blood, with an oxygen mask to the carnival, dances in a vicious circle, but who saves it from the nightmare, exhausted and out of step,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                sine, cosine, in which corners can one still hide to live in peace, it gets cold instead of warm, ink for the lettering, electricity flows through the needle, the heart in a web of veins, everyone can look inside, what was there to buy, at the market, life and death, ripe promises, the quality of the goods is discovered at home, who knows how long that stuff will last, how long it will live, by itself, disrooted, defoliated, tied up, pickled heart, needs nothing and no one, doesn’t scream for help, it helps itself, only later does it think of God, why am I not learning from it my cor, kardia, Herz, cuore, inima, kokoro, corazón, xinzang, serce,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Mr. Herz measured the oscillations and put a T before the last letter of his name, whispering so that it doesn’t sound sentimental, frequency one-point-two, radio waves drift a word-wreck ashore, a boat with a small hole, full of seaweed and kelp, nautilus, it’s rushing in the head, in the Black Sea, wave after wave, cardiogram, for an hour, face to face, I don’t ask for permission, who’s getting sleepy now, my heart shames me, it doesn’t think about rest, drum roll or storm of thoughts, commas, extrasystoles, one greets with volleys of three or six or nine, trumpeting here-I-am and thinking never-give-up,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               never think I’ve given up, just because I step out of line and if I do, then solemnly, with dignity, one beat too many is better than one too few, my father said, beating is healing for the defiant child, and raised his hand, peppy, hearty, without rhythm, so that the fear lingers, so that the heart beats faster, you can’t accomplish anything and you’re ugly on top of that, whose child anyway, stop crying, get up and keep walking, hurry up, the day is long, no time for thirst and hunger, keep going until you fall and can’t get up, only then will it become clear that one has tried everything,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               blind heart, has only one ear, heart with a will of its own, what does it think of “the end” or “always,” it beats, whether it wants to, or no, it doesn’t want to anymore, the threat is the key to life, the dictator works illegally, is celebrated during the day and insulted at night, cunning and revenge effect nothing, who knows what one will be punished for, the heart is as stupid as a child, it lives anti-clockwise, against winter and summer and heaven and earth, now and then a sugar cube, so that it has hope, so that it doesn’t say, with a red heart-mouth, I-quit, I-quit,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               then only two minutes would remain to promise the unheard-of, whining, pleading, there is no regret in the nick of time, there is no reply when a reply was never demanded, no forgiveness when it was never desired, go ahead, die, entwined with coral-branches, stand still, let them talk, his-heart-has-failed, so what, exhausted, burst asunder, in his sleep, one beat with all its force, one jump over the barrier, the border fence, and you, you’re staying on the other side and wait for it to turn around, call out to you “I’m coming back,” but it’s moving forward, exposing everything and then leaves, everyone will see it, they will saw you open, a-miracle-that-he-lived-so-long, with the clogged vessels, the black spots, the knots, the worries, the thorny branches, the love, which he forgot, like wax in the ear, auriculum, how could it still beat, so fat and big, sumo wrestler, holding the world record in compliance, every contraction and every release, individual, alike, irrelevant, ordinary, essential,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               day by day by beat by moment, every systole a gambit, in the end one loses, death wins, I only win as long as I can delay its victory, systole by move by beat, pause for thought, diastole, I breathe out, galley-work or tap dance, I am timer, rhythm and beat, beat by beat, the only one that doesn’t hurt, the punch from mother’s hand, where she beats, that’s where it grows, that’s how one gets torn and far-sighted, the lantern fish ignites its light, the deceptive eye on the forehead, I am not what you see, my light is my sound, I am a fishbone in the skeleton of the sea,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               pause before you keep on talking, look to the right, to the left, all the pillars of salt in the courtyards, women and daughters and a man who survived, because he never looked back, didn’t count the dead, heard no sighs, but he is only the court aide, he is waiting for the daily verdict that falls like a ripe apple from the crown of a tree, he picks it up and speaks the message, spits out the seeds, they taste like almonds, it’s all just an illusion, you don’t recognize the verdict in its parts, everything is right and wrong, in front of a judge who’s waiting and sighing, in the cold of fear, in the wind of worry,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               to make it easier for my heart, to pump up all the words that couldn’t be said, when I realized it could end at the edge of the gorge, with me and my babbling mouth, I heard say, I heard and I believed and stayed still, and then it thundered why-are-you-silent and the fist fell hard on the table, everything jumped, knife and glass and the leftovers of bread, the crumpled sheet of paper that he couldn’t read, what-is-that-language, I stayed silent, no knocking, just a quiet racing, like a buzz in the ears after diving, I’ll-show-you-pride, answer, beat by beat no echo, no sound, and I was a stone and my heart was a stone and stones in the stomach, until the moment swelled and burst, like an air bubble, another dead balloon, nothing doing, one can’t patch this and period, the interruption of the circuit, period,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               who sucks it up, the last droplet of light-red blood, the cardiogram, the unfinished work, with all the lies and balancing maneuvers, detector, opus magnum, catalogue raisonné, everything is recorded, every piece of thought, broken chocolate, bitter work and the outrage at everything that rests, at everything that dreams and likes to think of itself, without the excitement of an early morning, after too short a night, the bells at six o’clock, how does one live near cathedrals, how does one live with pendulum clocks in houses on side streets, in rooms with reverb and a chime on the quarter hours, heart-alarm-bell, sirens on the roof of a fire engine, pulsing light under the wing of an airplane, how does the heart speak, the heart of a whale, the heart of a shark, they both read electric books, a shark can do more than me, it knows how to live, how to call without screaming,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               but I didn’t scream, diverted blood, now the machine is pumping, the heart remains still, it’s resting, it’s sleeping, it doesn’t feel the cut, it doesn’t feel the stitches, it’s as cold as a snowman and succumbs, dreaming of the beats it could have beat, in the first minute, in the second and further and longer, tambourines and bongos, finally hearing and seeing like a human being, a view without cage bars, the sudden light, 300 watts, serious eyes, latex hands, first touch, it wasn’t me who touched my heart, nor the love of my life, but a surgeon, too fast, too close, he sees the remains of doubt, the hidden and the missing, he looks inside, he looks into my open heart and discovers the error, you’re-going-too-slow, why-do-you-get-tired, you’re cross-eyed, you lie, you’re restless, you cry too much, too loud, stop asking, eat and go to bed, you’re disturbing, don’t pretend, shut up, enough with the baby steps, don’t complain, and then the door slams shut, the keyhole is sewn up, a sigh escapes just before the last stitch,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               how many questions were left behind, in the corners of the chambers, under the stones of the courtyards, under the plaster of the walls, who was walled in lest the house collapse overnight, the living house needs a living sacrifice, I was there, at the right time, as I was told, I only knew that it had to be saved, the work, the fortress, the I-I-I of the proud fathers, they demand sacrifices, with the chin up, to the last, lowest, highest, someone who is replaceable and yet not without a certain value, so,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               cheer up, the arms held close to the body, and at some point the breathing will stop, sewn in, a coin in the hem of a wedding dress, and the blood, soaked in oxygen, light-red, is waiting for the dam to open again, for the snowman to melt in the Red Sea, my body a delta, 100 joules, wanting-to-live or staying-dead, rocking on a question mark for twenty minutes, in the excess of a period, nothing tends to zero, nowhere, only the heart remembers something and counts scars, it all boils down to this invitation, request, asked to come in, 100 joules, again, they’re waiting for my reply, they want me to give a sign, and it begins, get up and go, and no one to tell me where,

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               who interrupts the line of a cardiogram, who says at what sound a word loses its meaning, stumbled into an empty room, set yourself up, and no more mistakes, I can’t go any faster, but I can go farther, from stone to stone, why not hop, jump, and no bigeminy yet, the path can be nice and smooth, wrong, you’re thinking wrong, it sounds, sine node with loudspeaker, clock, slave driver, all serving the purpose of not hearing it, the knocking on the chest wall, and no mirrors please, don’t want to know anything about me, who asked me into the room, who kept me waiting, without a glass of water, a piece of bread, a kind word, I’m stepping on the spot, that one same spot, which is a small pit already that’s getting deeper with every stamp, stumble, step—

“Herz” from Hauthaus. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2016.

Image by Yusuke Nagaoka.