A Sonnet Sent Inward

You send a sonnet to some body part,

A non-expectant one, and when the text

Is read there, say, inside your clueless heart,

It learns its pulse of muscle has been hexed

By dumbness life has lesioned there. A tongue

Removed has left a ventricle too scarred.

The chamber cannot taste.  It’s like a lung

With cancer, non-elastic, bunged up, hard,

And so the heart cannot respond.  The lines

You sent are left as meaningless.  No throb

Can answer words sent out to sealed up mines.

The sonnet ends up like a blocked out blob.

  The auricles are thirsty for your rhymes,

    But this poor organ has been scabbed by crimes.

~ Phillip Whidden