Medium and Green Hearts
— a heart for Linda
Medium: not too much, not too little — just right. Just Write.
Medium for our write rightings. Our politics are right.
Oops! No, not that kind of right. Right — as in correct, as in
I know I think and write right. Right?
Or … “do you love him, Loretta?”
“I love him Medium, Ma.”
“OMG I thought the new Star Wars trailer was
so Medium!”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m all write. Medium. You know.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“She ain’t write n’ th’head, she ain’t.”
“Write, mate. I fink you’re write.”
Hills are Medium, not too big, not too small, but serene.
Show me the money. Show me the Green. Green
with envy. Green under the gills.
Money, envy, sick-ness, ills. Slime, always green.
Don’t want to touch it. Money is dirty.
Money, laundered Under God, indivisible,
not just underwear. Under where? Ah, made you say it.
Dirty words for money? Dirty money for words?
“Art” and “heart” rhyme. He-art. She-art.
Start with the heart, then comes the art. Beware the
righters whose words be a dart. Watch for the righters
who make yer heart start.
Money be clean
when we don’t right fer green. — old Irish starving-poet proverb
Heart. Love. Love, heart. A heart doesn’t click, it beats.
The write righters want heart-clicks to see who
clicks with their write words. They measure heart rates
with green bars, not fingers on a pulse.
Pulses move. Bars stay put. When I read many righters,
my reaction is Medium, you know… “all write…”
their right-ness-ings don’t click with mine.
I don’t click with sick, envy, or
something unwell. I want words I can swim in
without having to scrub off the ingratiation with a loofah.
So why right? Write?
When I read right, when I write right, it’s written write-ly,
there is no Medium…my heart rate is not behind bars —
right writes set my heart free, running fast and high.
Rates of green hearts don’t mean words melting stars.
That’s not why for me:
“You like me, you really like me!”
Then show me the green heart?
Ah, the eternal tug ‘o’ war betwixt money ‘n’ art.
The real heart rating-beats happen indoors,
in back o’ the ribs, me bonny lass, yours;
the insides, when my words coil around your guts,
and take your heart by force. No means yes, then, no?
Buthump, buthump, buthump…no bar graph to
measure my words carefully now, eh?
Rate your clicks according to my “right-for-you” words,
because right is when I write for your beets, not your greens.
Rate my right writes with your sweet-red-splitting seems.
If my words click
to your bonny clack,
then you rub me mine,
and I’ll rub you right back.
Many Medium words
incite faces gone slack,
ah, a shame, isn’t Lass?
No way to keep track ‘o that.
xo J.A.
(p.s. I heart your words, Linda-lass,
but more important than green,
the too-high clicks in me ribcage —
know what I mean?
Whether you do or not
remains to be seen. And sorry ‘bout the Irish lilt, ‘tis
only fer farce,
butcha know how I be —
such a pain in the arse ;)
