poetry: Nonus- "I used to be a bad man"

I used to be a bad man
Until they took my mind away
And now I am not accountable
This is what the doctors say.
One marvel they held from me
In my own time
Was that the heart may still beat
Without the mind.
And mine is surely lost
While the heart is on display
My chest gaping open,
All the rest in decay
Except for this evil thing,
destroying all in its way.

I have never been my master
I have never known liberty
From the chains of this monster
Inside of me
I have never opened my heart
To good and fruitful results
Only to blood
Pure as fetid mud.
And the irony, it is
I never knew of this
I never knew I had heart
Until I lost my mind....

And as it turns out
You can kill the mind quick,
And leave the heart beating.
Who would have guessed this?
And it becomes my fate
To wonder beneath
The dark waters I drowned
In the limbo where I bleed.
Every face laughs
There is the man with no mind.
I used to be a bad man
When I had the choice to find
The pathway between the two
And choose where good lies
But now I am a fool
Choice-less and blind.

I have never been my master
I have never known liberty
From the chains of this monster
Inside of me
I have never opened my heart
To good and fruitful results
Only to blood
Pure as black mud.
And the irony, it is
I never knew of this
I never knew I had heart
Until I lost my mind....

(c) 2012 Luz Briar.

poem: Yet I Wake

My heart often breaks in so many places

I wonder how large and soft it must be to have so many fractures

Yet at times I cannot feel it in my chest
like my hands, quick and creative

Slow to strike a living thing

Yet I wake with dirt and blood beneath my nails

Wishing some devil had driven me but recalling all the details

Made of glass

And the wind whistles through the cracks

Until it all crumbles…

Everything…

Heart, head, limbs, blood, bile

Yet I find I am mistaken when another break

Marches from the center of my heart

To its eastward corner

To beat in my bosom another day.