Together, these three poems trace an emotional arc through form: Each poem shows that the way a heart beats in poetry—its rhythm, its structure, its breath—is inseparable from the way it feels. Form doesn’t just carry emotion; it shapes how we understand it.

Poem Title	Form	Emotional Tone	Function of Structure

Lonely Heart	Free verse	Raw grief, paralysis	Fragmented lines reflect emotional disarray
Love Lost and Yearning	Rhymed quatrains	Elegiac, tender	Rhyme and meter transform sorrow into art
Meditation on the Mechanical Persistence of Life	Blank verse	Detached, existential	Formal restraint mirrors emotional numbness

Love Lost and Yearning

A lonesome heart beats softly in the chest,
Its rhythm beating names the mind forgot.
Each pulse recalls the warmth that once caressed,
Each silence mourns the echo that is not.

It holds its breath, afraid to break the dream,
Afraid to weep, lest memory awake—
For love once flowed like sunlight on a stream,
And left behind the shimmer of its wake.

If only time could cradle what was dear,
And grief grow gentle, softened into art;
But still, it beats, through longing and through fear—
This faithful, foolish, ever-living heart.

Slowly, sweetly, though the nights depart—
It beats for love, and calls it life’s own art.

Meditation on the Mechanical Persistence of Life

A lone heart beats slowly, without will,
Its lifeblood withheld, its rhythm spare.
The body moves, but all within is still—
An echo trapped in unremembered air.

It holds its tears as though they might restore
A world already vanished, pale, and cold.
Each memory, a wound it can’t ignore,
Each pulse, a tolling bell for what grows old.

If to breathe is pain, then cease the breath;
If to feel is loss, let numbness start.
No life remains but that which mimics death—
A beating void within an empty heart.

Slowly, slowly, until it is done—
The pulse goes on. The meaning—none.

Lonely Heart (from 2004)

A lonely heart beats slowly,
Holding back its lifeblood from the body,
Holding back the tears,
Holding back the memories
That make the heart lonely.

Wishing the memories would fade—
If not to breathe again,
Then to give up breath;
If to cry again,
Then to give up all tears;
If to bleed again,
And not to live again—
Then to give up.

Slowly, slowly,
Beats the heart.
Lonely.