If I Throw My Heart

if I throw my heart over the stone cold wall of the world

can I say I am a message in the bottle shatter the bottle

or the ship in the bottle set free upon a real sea

I have broken the glass with my own fraught soul

raising one frail voice but a little in such a narrow channel yet-

one sparkle of truth outnumbers the circus verbosity of those

who spin the plates that they may rule and count the rest of us fools

the fool scripture well says believes in his heart that there is no God

the message will survive I am speaking tonight, of all the poets

who withstood all the lies who were not used in any complicit way

how beautiful their lines encoded with hidden moonlight in such a dark time lay in infinite peril of disappearing

so that if you in a future time should read them merely glance upon a line

you will know what is meant by the ambivalence of your Age

and what a forged signature it all is.

and through the after mirage of their words

learn the trick of outwitting it all

that they in their hunted luminosity

will not have haunted this stage for nothing.

mary angela douglas 22 april 2021

1Mary Angela Douglas