Something that smells like copper
The taste of dirty pennies when you were a toddler
Sucking the oxides and zinc from the nineteen forties

Something fogs up the sheen
Clouding the luster that had only
Lasted the few seconds it took to
Breathe firmly in the gray December morning
On the hilltop of your twenties

The tinged bronze gulp of
Dull brown-gold
Some sort of battleground between
Beauty and macabre
Steam and cold water
Biting down on sheet metal stained;
This is what a heart attack tastes like:
Electricity and your own mouthblood.