This week's SPU Poetry Contest (https://steemit.com/contest/@poetsunit/spu-poetry-contest-3-announcement-winners-of-2) challenged us to write a poem using a quote from another poem as inspiration. My poem, "Half-Hearted", is about trying to live without love for fear of being hurt. Here is the quote I chose to use for inspiration:

"My throat, a dam
Passing droplets while gushing waters attempt to overflow
My tongue, a straightjacket
Twisting arms and disorienting limbs
Struggling
Strangling
Suppressing

taken from The Process of Writing a Love Letter by @itinerantartist, who won the first contest."

Half-Hearted

Two chambers
Sucking air
Spurting blood
Here and there

'Til the body's
Bloodless, dry
No spit to swallow
Tears to cry

Now pumping nothing
On automatic
As if this thing
Were run by magic

Butterfly wings
Ripped but trying
Still to find
A way of flying

Headless snakes strike
Just the same
Centipede legs
Dance away

Wait: the elephant
In the room will die
For want of a single
Pair of eyes

Blue ribbon
Obliviousness
This mass of tubes
Sticking out of the chest

This question echoing
Without answer
Solitary
Ballroom dancer

Keeping time
For an endless hour
Dying to live
A fish out of water

For want of an ocean
In which to swim
My better half:
A phantom limb.

©2018 Bennett Italia, All Rights Reserved