I Found the Key

poetic prompt: "looking through the keyhole"

Walking with grand eloquent purpose
      (have to take a leak!!)
down the hallway of my building,
marching determinate 
through the phantom odors
of exotic cooking,
I hear a metallic scratching,
scritching chatter from the door
of 304B.

No one's there, my memory prompts
been unoccupied for weeks now,
since the Weiselman's moved to Florida...

yet that dental tool scraping digs
into my attention and the bladder is forgotten.

Leaning closer with my left ear prominent
I audibly search for the eye watering sound.
I seems to come from just below the knob,
from the keyhole, brass and scratched
from hastily inserted door keys,
a crazy haphazard star of brighter etched scars
on the weak patina.

I bend down to get a bird's eye view
and send my curious glance into the keyhole.
A dark, thin rectangle greets my vision
with that sound emanating from within,
causing my right eye to tear up and blur.
All thought molten in the dissonance
of metal on metal needing much neglected oils,
my mind dances on auditory trance,
dissolved and absorbed.

That dark, rectangular portal pulls me in,
impossibly shrunken and stretched
to mesh inextricably with the machinery inside.
The mechanistic oneness discovered,
brass parts linked to my lymphatic system,
my heart and lungs in rhythm
with the cylinder, tumbled in joyous union.
My spirit reaching out to commune
with the irresolute strike plate.
I exult in a spectacular meeting
of metal, mass
and my life.

In a single nanosecond stretched moment
everything, absolutely every bit, makes

sense.

All the myriad connections
are lined up in the order
of their cosmic perfection.
Once understood, those connections
move in a celestial, orbital dance.
Etheric tumblers align and fall;
the universe clicks.

I am the key...

Reviews

[Jonathan Ballam]

Loved this piece. It was very visual and had that nail-biting quality of a thriller. The ending in particular struck me, as impressive!

Great solid write, thank you for sharing (and reading my poem of course)

Jon ;)