Saturday, March 21, 2009

Oblivious: A Saturday Poem


Oblivious


Three kids are in love with their sandwiches.

The one in an olive-colored shirt alternates between
cookie and sandwich and pop and laughter while
cramming it all into his freckles he marries a monstrous
beast develops liver disease plastic tubes keep him alive until not.

The one with thick glasses and mustard on his laughing lip
secures a fortune in the stock market loses it all
night watchman finds what he was on the sidewalk.

The one in the red jacket with the laugh like
rain falling her only child dies in the womb after a long
bout with cancer she too succumbs to life.

It is beautiful to watch them with their sandwiches.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

2 comments:

Beth said...

Envisioning such future scenarios requires great imagination, a love and command of the written word – and a sense of doom.
Wouldn’t it be awful to be a psychic?

Cipriano said...

The worst thing about being a psychic would not involve knowing other people's futures... but knowing my own.
I do have a great imagination ["great" meaning somewhat active and approaching inexhaustible], and this is peppered with general pessimism... very few of us will end prettily.
This poem was inspired by the actual experience of watching three kids laughing and eating their Subway sandwiches in a Mall food court. I wrote it on the mustard-smeared napkin of my own sandwich.