He fell and hung his lungs on the handlebars.
His breathing had become tiresome of late.
A signpost that a long rest was called for:
one that needed to stretch beyond measured miles.
 
A heave of inclines had taken its toll.
He’d thought something had caught in the spokes,
freewheeling down the valley before skidding
and hanging in mid-air for far too long.
 
Dismayed, he gasped and took out his liver,
and laid it to rest on a steep bank.
It looked like a deflated slab of rubber ball,
kicked around like too many old bottles.
 
His kidneys were next. They pissed him off.
Gnarled walnuts.  He put them in the basket.
He couldn’t believe they didn’t need to be
a fully functioning pair anymore.
 
Then, he unscrewed the lid around his temple
and a history of chiffchaffs sprang out in
a confusion of released springs and lost summers:
memories sown cross weave into the verging grass.
 
Scooping out his brain, he placed it on the saddle.
It was greyer and more wrinkled than he’d thought.
He daren't look in the cracked wing mirror anymore:
he’d hardly recognize himself in the mess.
 
Finally, he pulled his heart out of its cage.
It had suddenly ceased to pump properly.
There must be perforation in a pipe:
wet gush was overflowing everywhere.
 
He popped it onto the scarred, hard road.
It had bled profusely in its day
and raced at times on the tandem rides,
but something had punctured and syncopated it.
 
All was now silent and strangely still:
an empty, mortified, scattered object
beyond a carefree flip over the crossbar
left jarred by the confusion at the junction.
 
Unable to figure, felled and disorganised,
he felt a drip, as a puddle of red oil
spread and started to congeal in the heat.
He’d misplaced what couldn’t be transplanted.