For Lack of a Keyhole

For Lack of a Keyhole

Surely, to be suffocated any place on Earth, in water,
or in one's own bed, lungs failing, would be catastrophic.
Medical science will tell you that no matter how you die,
lack of oxygen will always be the cause.

Heart attack. Aneurysm. Stroke. Alzheimer's. Car crash.
Crushed with a wall of concrete. All of it. Lack of oxygen.
Oxygen, of which normal air is only 21%. - Atmosphere
the equivalent of a swipe of varnish on a basketball.

Thanksgiving dinner. Too much turkey in the windpipe
when Uncle Louis tells the best joke you've ever heard.
Now he's doing your eulogy. I think of the astronaut.
Recently severed from the mother ship, and floating.

Here is someone wishing a shark would end it sooner.
He looks at his supply data. Four minutes to eternity.
The world receding at a clip. In those moments he recalls
a professor going on about Luther and his 95 Theses.

The Wittenberg door. How vitally important that was.
Right about now, the Wittenberg keyhole would be nice.
One nostril at a time. In that keyhole. Two minutes now.
He thinks of his wife. His two sons. The Earth is so blue.

… and then no one thinks for him. Only of him.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2014 --

Spoon River

Spoon River

Our equivalent of a clock, we agreed
When the wick of this candle is done
we will head out.

Sputtering in a pool of wax, we watched
Waited. Breath-baited.
Then… poof.

The moon complied, clouds clearing.
Clang of the screen door as we ran
undressing.

I flung myself from the pier, looking back.
You hung everything on the notch of a tree
diving in.

So many things in life are disconnected.
Some never seem to come together.
I swept my arms underwater --

Just as they met my thighs, I reached yours
in the shallows of Spoon River.
Kissed them, laced under the shining stars.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2014 --

The Very Hereafter

The Very Hereafter

What if we selected a solemn tree, un-forested.
As unseen and untouched as possible.
Walked around the trunk a minimum of four times.
Fell to the ground and spoke our secretest words
into the ear of last year's leaves, palms down.
Traced the hinting of roots, sunken deep, hidden.
Sensing meanwhile, cloudbursts soaking bark
the moment we were born, thirsty for the sun.
A ring within capturing the urgency of our parents.

Believing! - as we circled this tree, that we beheld
the very hereafter.

Would we be dishonouring religion that preceded us?
Or the tree itself, which will outlive us, likewise.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2014 --

I Think My Cat Thinks

I Think My Cat Thinks

He is fully sleeping. REM. Everything.
I mean, zonked. Back turned to me.
I will look in his direction. An ear twitches.

No keys rattling. After a day's absence
I unlock the door to his urgent tenancy.
The plaintive mows [silent "e"] greet me.

We speak of geysers, and their faithfulness.
The one in Yellowstone has not met Kennedy.
It would turn into unheated porridge.

In his presence, I feel myself belov'ed.
And if animals, as some think, have no souls
I wonder if we, who presumably do, do.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2014 --

Bars

Bars

There is that horror of being imprisoned.
And then there is you.
There is that fear of impossible regret.
A decision that cannot easily be reversed.

Bars: a word of such potential ambiguity.
Could refer to chocolate. A drinking spot.
A place where the ocean meets the sand.
An academic world, where lawyers study.

There is that horror of being imprisoned.
And then there is you.
The beauty. The bars of your arms.
Around me. The very opposite of capture.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2014 --