Entries From A Terrible Poet's Thesaurus #5: Heart

Heart (n.): The centermost part of person, place, or thing

A series of tubes and muscles the size of a tennis ball . An excuse factory . Poetic term meaning brain . The hub of decision making . Art with an h that is not only not silent but also never shuts up . A metronome . The most important part of a city according to the people who finance tourism . The innermost piece of lettuce that usually ends up in the sink . Oh yes the pain the pain that it causes that can not possibly be blamed on any other organ of the body . Flooder of open wounds and tear ducts . The piece of meat romanticized as important and yet we are much more likely to eat the ribs designed to protect it . A bird in a cage on a hipster t-shirt . A tattoo designed for archery practice . A twee verb synonymous with like . The shape of a two hands when joined by the upper knuckles of the fingers and the pads of the thumbs . Fragile noun intended to imply focus . The part of the body most often crossed when lying . Organ routinely hidden when one is pledging allegiance to something sinister . An athletic term often confused for strength . Despite the weapon what is always the real cause for bleeding

I'm compiling the Terrible Poets' Thesaurus by reading poems by unfamiliar writers and jotting down unusual word choices. Once I find a term three times, I attempt to define it by deconstructing it as it appears to me in the context of the poems in which they're used, which are unlikely to be the way the authors intended them. Alternately, I look at my own poems and find words that I overuse and attempt to imagine how others might interpret them.