Break My Heart
There are always flowers,
Love cries, or blood.
Someone is always leaving
By exile, death, or heartbreak.
The heart is a fist.
It pockets prayer or holds rage.
It's a timekeeper.
Music maker, or backstreet truth teller.
Baby, baby, baby
You can't say what's been said.
Before, though even words
Are creatures of habit.
You cannot force poetry
With a ruler, or jail it at a desk.
Mystery is blind, but wills you
To untie the cloth, in eternity.
Police with their guns
Cannot enter here to move us off our lands.
History will always find you, and wrap you
In its thousand arms.
Someone will lift from the earth
Without wings.
Another will fall from the sky
Through the knots of a tree.
Chaos is primordial.
All words have roots here.
You will never sleep again
Though you will never stop dreaming.
The end can only follow the beginning.
And it will zigzag through time, governments, and lovers.
Be who you are, even if it kills you.
It will. Over and over again.
Even as you live.
Break my heart, why don't you?
_____________________
Joy Harjo
An American Sunrise
Norton 2019
