CE Chaffin

Late at Night

The glass eyes of Chartres shine blue
but there is no color for the sun
when gun barrels ransom the news.
Even innocents kill because
a demon lover is better than none at all,
to wear incendiary colors better than invisible.

Late at night my veins run with words
I think of their clotted freeways
and the interchanges of arteries.
It is hard to believe
there is blood in the heart
and not much else.

Substitute

With a Kung-Fu move
you clawed under my sternum
and stole my heart.
Did you dry it into leather
to make shoes?
Did they pulse along the arches?
I miss it, the lub-dub
of the blood's metronome.

In public I mimic the living
to blend in-- this is my heroism.
In private I thump my chest
like a talking drum
and weep for an answer.
None comes.

Give me back what you stole
or at least a surrogate
to nestle between my lungs
like a lost bird,
something like a heart
but not as tender,
the water pump of your car
or even your fist--
something I won't miss.

CE Chaffin writes: I’ve published a lot, more on-line than on paper, in everything from The Alaska Quarterly Review to Zuzu's Petals. Mellen Press released my first volume of poems in 1997, entitled Elementary, available through Amazon.com. A second-generation native Californian and family physician, I live near LA in a high rise on the ocean with my wife and three daughters. I am co-editor of the Melic Review and belong to the Zeugma on-line poetry workshop.