pacemakers and arrhythmia
i will never leave appalachia/ i know that/ it just is/ i do not love appalachia/ i do not know how to love a place/ i hold no romance for it to my naked breast/ the beauty of the blue ridge is more ruthless than you can know/ that soft, dark rain slowly rolling your way can tear the tin roof off the cabin you live in/ tomorrow, i go into hospital for pacemaker surgery/ my heart is not working well/ arrhythmia is like that pony storm rolling toward you and you cannot see what the thing can really do between the long grass and the somnambulant beds still tongue-tied in your weathered shell where pulling off the top knows all the names of all the lovers you have turned the observant backwards on/ incomprehensible is my other life, my second self, and it makes less sense that this one that would manage by some trick to shock my heart and blind it in the flash/ this time, i am here to stay/ i have stared the world down and packed my brothers into vast cathedrals and phoned in the strategy shivering in the winds of silhouette/