CPR SAVES LIVES

CPR SAVES LIVES


Out of time and astumble, as May, in a gasp, appeared, the man, excruciatingly alert on the sidewalk, on suffocating bricks, murmured, “It’s time to set my affairs in order.”  Bees circulated down from many eaves, his heart hovered, his lungs buzzed.  Where was his will—to sign it—where was his love?  It should have been oh so simple, like in and out, like systole, diastole, but instead he doubled-up, but instead it lingered too springy all day, too fleury, yes, and throughout afternoon wasn’t his heart trying to keep pace?  Another cigarette?

Match flowering on a tender stem: inhale, exhale; and green leaves, as always, twinned themselves, a predicament, and his lover, the Queen of Hearts, came twinned as always, topsy-turvy, offering marigolds.  Annamarie and Marianna, his double vision, the spring ensemble.

Stomach in a knot, like a true love knot, okay?  What else, tachycardic or wrapped too tight, amongst snaky brick walls at the stroke of noon, was he to imagine?  What didn’t bud in Virginia flowerbeds?  Primroses, anywhere.  And stamina, lacking, lackluster, among perfumy blooms.  But ornamental and gorgeous cabbages, yellow, purple, contused; and daffodils, he resuscitated these, and their thousand injuries.  Might as well be a dreamed-up England, right?  A Renaissance right here and now!  Have you ever seen a dream walking?  Here she comes again, here she comes again, syzygial.

Breathe in and out.  He did.  This was, for the most part, coincidence, or insignificant as an untimed pulse.  Time out of joint or just dislocated.  “I bet they dreamed a lot then!”  His lover scattered crumbs—placebos, maybe—along the sidewalk cracks to cure birds bobbing heartily, fluttering, pneumonic.  Small change, really.  Annamarie crimsonly said, “I’ve got a line to Our Lady of the Lonely, and you're one, man, you’re inscrutably human and breathless.”  Ephemera, ephemera, she’s strewing roses, dispensing prescriptions, would rather metamorphosize undreamily, get real.  He blows it.  Breathe. 

Marianna said, whitely, “I don’t know what country this is, but I’d like to save everyone in it.”  She herself dodged anginose bees, the clot, she stepped over cracks where robin-run-away fantasized, she plucked an iris, she hoped to be plucked from phantasmagoria, too.  But he couldn’t look away to save anybody’s life.  A match, a match!

Annamarie and Marianna, they’re, like springtime long agone, a long time gone.  If hazily they blossomed between cracks, as his life passed, yes, before his eyes, they did, in poignant May know flowering, white, and scarlet pain as real as his, except growing.  Where was his will?  It’s simple, like systole, like diastole.  But wouldn’t he rather be pale, constricted, blue, in fact, a Forget-Me-Not?  If anyone can do anything in time, it’s his turn now, at the stroke of Mayday noon, as vines pump themselves up about the trellis, wherein, emergent, his lover, for all she’s worth, breathes.  Come around!  Because someday now, flowers will bloom for real.

Jack Hayes
© 2010