Two Poems

Human versus Robot

It keeps on doing its best,
That reddish thing inside me
Pumping-pumping against
The obstinate, tortuous fankle
Of pulpy valves and tubeworms.

Are they up to it any more –
Thin-skinned, semi-elastic,
A labyrinth of Victorian sewers,
A sort of organic circuit board
That badly needs rewiring?

Titanium would do better,
A tiny refined-alloy sleeve
Inserted deep in the pulsing darkness.
It might be still better if they invented
In some far century to come
An entire person of titanium.

Watching the Angiogram

A creature struggles under ice,
Black spider twitching, bunching
Its spiny legs while shoals of its young
Come clustering round it, spawned
From its pulsating womb, or aliens
Crowding at us under the ice
Which is quaking beat-beat-beat,
Perfectly regular, the tissue
Of my X-rayed heart, that wounded muscle,
As the dye swarms through the dendron
Of its multiple branchings,
Flushes a narrowed valve, and keeps on trying
To make its umpteenth comeback.