Teeny Tiny Heart

by  J. Otis Powell

How it happened is at lease two different stories

Maybe more if rumor takes hold and multiplies

Narratives like the telephone game we played

In school and at conferences

Who was there to inhale the changing air

To witness what two people alone knew

However every soul that gets a testimony

Develops new narratives when they leak a tale

The Ibo say “all stories are true”

Which makes every story told a labyrinth

No one person can navigate alone

It takes at lease two…

So we’re dropped in the middle of poetry

Figuring real from illusion

Actual from imagination

Fact from foolishness

For some it happens daily or almost everyday

And it can challenge one’s sense of appropriateness

But there we are and it is running away with us

Again

In the words of Amiri Baraka “Craziness is no act

Not to act is craziness” so we do something

According to the intoxication we’re under

It seems easy at first

Scrabbled eggs for brains

Tossed salad logic and a buzz that keeps

Us awake at night and dreaming all day

We stumble into infatuation into

The sweetest trouble on earth

What’s real between opposites becomes

Invisible

What’s invisible becomes truth

Just beneath the surface bubbles everything

That makes us different and whatever

Made us the same pot of stew

When something feeds a lonely heart

Consumption requires valor and one

Goes poco loco for flashes in time

Conjuring what might be impossible

All because of gentle touches warm smiles

And a parting promise to return

For seconds self-loathing lost its power

To be the dominant culture

A teeny tiny omen reinforced a dream

And though my feet are firmly on the floor

Instead of in my mouth I can still enjoy

The pure pleasure of new love again…