Ode to the Defense Mechanism

Ira Sadoff

Some of the deadpan（面无表情的人） comes from the flatness, 

 the feigned（假的） all-rightness, the sickening thrum of Kansas, 

 taking all day to drive through that treelessness.

Inside the hardness of the heart, the numbness 

 of the heart, there lay a smaller heart, 

 a splinter（碎片，微小的东西） in your finger, throbbing and pulsing 

so you can see how alive you are. God 

 what a fenestration（开窗法） the heart is. 

 What strangers see is frontismatter. 

An intro to the highlights as we see them. 

 All our old loves are still there, 

 impervious（不受影响的） and glass-enclosed. You can tap 

on the glass and get a rise out of them 

 because into each life there must be 

 a ruler and a grid, a little schadenfreude（幸灾乐祸） 

so it won't be our hearts breaking.