The heart is mighty above all things.
And no where will you know this better
than when you see this girl for the first time
and hold in your mind a picture of her

burning as a fever behind your closed
eyelids, night after restless night when moths
run into flames and fires, are consumed by suns in-
side lightbulbs. All around you the world seems

dim, seems less than it is as when
she is slowly unfolding before
your hungry eyes. Her name is a pounding fist
upon your heart, setting your ears ringing

with sweetly succulent vowels of rounding,
lilting love-melodies, sweetly haunting phantoms
emerging whole from cavernous mouths as
lipstick-shaped lexis that reverberate

across the panorama of this old television screen
this urine-stained linen sheet
that doubles as a neighborhood
cinema screen, sharing our communal

dreams. Your tongue could care less
if it burnt by this stale cigarette or the blue-smoke taste
of her huntress hair. You could care less,
you could wager less, you could

die for less. Your heart is a warrior;
it is mighty above all else. It knows-
everything is always about the girl.
It’s always about the girl.

So when you see them running after you
with guns, with swords, with fiery
spit-firing anti-aircraft missiles;
know-

bad guys can’t shoot for shit
your friendly neighborhood mutant/ super-
human (despite being divinely conflicted)
will always rescue your faith in mankind

and it will always rain on your parade
only when you feel like it
only when her mascara is waterproof
and saying (with grit teeth jaw clenched eyes on the sky)

‘I’m ready’

and all your dreams will play out Technicolor-true
and not a hair will be out of place
not a tear will go to waste;
all your long roads will lead up to this place,

this warm smile and the promise of her embrace,
this girl you could spit at dragons for, this girl
you could murder a brother for. I promise you, Shanti-goddess-music
will play (always) when you reach out to touch her…

…

and I speak these words into sieved
mouthpieces of strange phones set in forgotten
rain-rusted booths. I have not dialed the number
of the party I desire to reach because

I hope to catch you breathing
on the other end and know somewhere, you
too, are holding a phone next to your ear, listening
to the dial-tone and ‘Please enter the number

of the party you desire to reach’. I wish, like a fool,
I could hear your voice saying ‘Hey’ even though
I have not dialed a number,
I could not dial a number, even

if I had one for you. Your silence
keeps me gambling with words
that spill into such lachrymose promises
I will live for you I will wait for you I will be here for I will be for you I will die for you

because
the heart is mighty above all else
this heart that strives for the girl
its always about the girl, you see,

its always about the girl.