Half-Life
My face is in two halves
smashed together in flawed symmetry,
each half squirming to get supremacy,
Oh Two-Faced One!
Split so, halved down the middle,
which side are you on?
Do I see my better half
in the mirror?
Or in the shadowy silhouette,
devoid of details,
that follows me around,
like a faithful dog,
wagging its tail.
Which half-truth should
I believe when spoken from
a forked tongue protruding
half-way out,
from twin lips clenched,
to hide the split slivers
of tongue clef in two,
by honesty to skulduggery?
The beat of the heart
I hear and feel as one,
emanates from two chambers
left and right beating in harmony
but not together simultaneously.
One flows into the other,
and upper and lower halves
beat one after the other
two by two, two by two
a tango flamingo.
But each half, though never still,
feels the ache
of faking a one-beat heart,
halfheartedly, to listeners,
with one half beating memories,
the other longing legacies.
Is half a glass,
half full or empty in quenching thirst?
Is half-and-half ever a whole?
Is the half-light, a fade or surge to the coming?
It's half past the hour:
I'm late, I'm late!
Or too early for the shower?
Is a half-life, the life of those
poor folk on Bikini Atoll
must endure waiting for
their hell on earth to end,
something we all share,
living our
own half-lives,
halfheartedly!
Copyright ©
John Anderson
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