The heart. The lungs. The stomach. These organs work without thinking.
They guide and goad. The beat. The breath. The hunger. I breathe in and out,
I step in time. The timed-release enzymes make the digestive system
Growl and I must stop and feed the beast small meals.

The brain. The eyes. Both of these I trust and fear. The humors.
The thoughts. The scenes. The spleen – that dated term for melancholy
Which comes and goes. The genius compass that tilts inside the mind.
The worry. The glass that always ends up empty because the water

Is just a trembling illusion with an outline of a tumbler.
The thirst. The tongue. These words I read to you
Are tapped out by a pink fish bathed in a light froth of spit.
The teeth are broken and repaired runes. This fish

Knocks against them until it grows tired and sleeps in its cup of silence.
The long vowel of the throat. The mallet and drum of the ear.
The eustachian tube that equalizes pressure. What is sung and what is heard
Uncoiling in the air is the outdoor concert of love and all

Of its tempos played for the conceit of the lover and the beloved.
The frame. The bones. The muscles. The tendons. The sinews that stretch
And burn in the arms during sex, the buck
And shudder in the hips and the garden that blooms and blooms in the brain.

The hormones. The neurotransmitters. The dendrites.
The sudden lack of sugar in the blood and the sweaty palms
And the adrenaline rush to get out of the building before it implodes.
The carbohydrate bribe that stimulates insulin breeds more hunger.

The DNA. The code. The fingers that pass over objects at night
Are made of what they touch – the pitcher of water, the sheets,
The chest of the person sleeping next to me. Our dreams run
Off the sympathetic nervous system, in the perpetual dark.