Poem: This Thing Called The Heart

A prompt challenge that I rarely take up. But here it is…just out with it!

POEM: This Thing Called The Heart

This thing called the heart
I am still figuring it out…
It will tell you where your home is.
Follow your heart, they say
In my life’s path, I have-
Like the canary, sung
That is beyond worldly care.
Care for anything in this world.
The short and long chirps
Somewhere, another heart moves.
A heart’s call begets another.

A chamber of muscle
A biological, bloody pump
The size, the lump of a fist
All, this is a cesspool of feelings
Love, hate, revenge, kindness
And all…the colors and hues of life

Love, they say, resides there
Place your right hand
Over your chest — the left side
Feel the beat — beat of life
The moments come and go
The beats keep the moments alive
Beyond a beat, vanishing into oblivion
Here, here — you are gone
The love, the good times now memories

In a home of four chambers
You still occupy the throne, dear
Protected by a cage of bones
Something like a vault
Till the birdie flies away
What would be left is silence
But, the memories are still buried
that fertile soil somewhere
Can still blossom daisies
From the spring of our love

Life and love, and all the good things
The hope that is needed for both
Trapped inside the fistful lump
Lie the secrets and memories
A journey with its twists and turns
I have spent all my life, my dear
Figuring out this for a long time
This thing called the heart

~Ashok Subramanian © 2024

A long-sought response from Priya Patel.

I too can’t figure out how
this heart beats
or more so, why it keeps beating
in the wrong direction

Oh, but when it beats,
it is like a thousand drums
dancing to the tango;
beating so hard, that it almost stops

Then with the slightest notice,
the heartbeats slow down;
from a tropical rainforest
to a gentle drizzle

This last time, my heartbeats screamed
like a thousand crows
Oh how no one could possibly know
how the heart beats stopped
and suddenly all of me was broken …

~ ©️ Priya Patel 12.7.2024 🕉

Here is the Haiku, I wrote in response:

Thousand miles apart

Our hearts beat in unison

Love in symphony

~Ashok Subramanian © 2024