Today,
I just wanna die in your arms,

I hope that you took the CPR course
to save me!

Picture a man’s solitary stroll on a sandy seaside,
Early time of day, just a short time after low tide,
Water almost calm, gentle waves lapping the shore,
Early morning sun brilliantly blazing the horizon.
Feel the wonderful breeze…smell the salty ocean air…  
See, hear the jaegers, gulls and terns flying without a care.

The soothing sounds of the wind, water and gulls
Are suddenly intruded upon by the sad cries of a small child.  
"What's wrong?" the man kindly asks, as he kneels next to her.
"Someone knocked down my sandcastle," is her reply, tears flowing.
"Don't worry little one, I'll help you build another."
To the little girl's delight, the man smooths away the sand,
In preparation for a newer, bigger, better sandcastle.

Soon his concentration is broken by frantic cries for help.  
Looking out over the water, he sees a tiny figure,
Desperately clinging to one of the buoys marking the deep-water.
Running to the water’s edge, he clearly sees another little girl,
Close in age to the first, whose swimming has carried her too far,  
And now she perilously clings to the buoy, unable to swim back.

The man returns to the first girl
And continues to build the sandcastle.
"The girl in the water is safe for now", he assures himself.
"As long as I can hear her cries for help,
I know her head is above water.
Besides, this other little girl's problem came first.
As soon as I am done with her sandcastle,
I will most certainly rescue the other one..."

And so, the man does build the sandcastle,
One more magnificent than the first.  
All the while he builds, he continues to hear
The desperate cries from the second little girl.  
By sandcastle’s finish, her cries have become weaker, less frequent.
"Are you happy now?" he asks the first little girl.
"Oh yes," she cries, "thank you sir...."
As she joyfully dances around her new sandcastle.

With that, the man springs into action,
Just as she slips off the buoy and goes under.  
He reaches her in record time with all the strength he can muster,
Expertly positioning her on her back with her face above water.
Wasting no time or effort he makes his way back to shore,
As more and more people gather to cheer on the savior.  
He gives CPR - after several coughs, water clears lungs, a life is not lost.
As if on cue, the rescue team arrives, transporting her to hospital.
Extremely grateful parents and the city honor him as a hero.

So what say you?  Is such a man deserving of honor?
How would the parents react If they knew the rest of the story?
Especially since he was the lifeguard assigned to beach patrol!

Now, friends, after considering all of this fuss,
The question bears asking, what about us?
Are we making sure of more important things,
Or are we busy building castles in the sand?

I need a doctor that will write a prescription for your kisses

like CPR for the soul

nothing is more healing

than your lips on mine

If you're a patient in a hospital, wouldn't you want to know
exactly how many people have died in the room
                                                                 you're currently sleeping in?    
                           How many hearts have stopped beating, how many
                                                               lungs have deflated, how many
pupils have stopped responding to light—
                                                          ­                 how long CPR was
                                                                ­             performed before
                                                                ­            Time     of     Death
                                                           ­                       was called?
How many DNR patients waltzed into the afterlife
without so much as a half-hearted chest compression?

Ribs can break during CPR.
How many cracked ribs have echoed
                                                                ­  across the walls of your
                                                                ­            hospital room?

                                                           x

Eve was made from Adam's rib.
God plucked the bone and
                                                                ­                  fashioned it into a
                                                                ­             subservient woman to
                                                                ­               replace the wild one,
                                                                   the first one, the no good one,
                                     the woman made from the same soil as Adam:
      Lilith.

                                                           x

We break ribs, break wishbones, break most things we don't understand. A confused patient will take out his IV, his PICC line, even pull at his chest tube or his LVAD driveline.
If it doesn't make sense, we will try to eliminate it in the sake of
                                                                ­                               normality.

                      ­                                     x

Some time in August, we had two codes within one hour.  After 30 or so minutes of chest compressions, they pronounced the second man dead.  He wasn’t my patient that night, and I didn’t know him.  I think his ribs snapped under Alyssa’s hands when she tried to revive him.
                                                            ­      And what does that feel like?   Not just the desperate rush of adrenaline,
        of trying to bring someone back to life—not just the emotional,
                                                                ­           but the physical of it all.

The cracking of the bone beneath the heels of your hands.  
Your fingers laced on top of each other
                                                                ­ pounding and
                                  pounding and
                                                                ­                                  pounding
                                                           against the sternum.  
One, two.  One, two.  One, two.  
                                                          ­            The bone cleaves in half.
And how much pressure does it take?  
I’m sure science could tell us, but
                              how does it feel in your arms, in your shoulders—
                       will your muscles remember the strength it takes and
                                                      stop you next time?

                                                           x

How hard did God have to try when he ripped out
         Adam's rib to make Eve? And
                           how long did it take Adam to recover from the loss?
(Maybe he never did.)

                                                           x

Healthcare is still so barbaric.  You must hurt to help.  
                               Saw through the sternum to get to the heart.  
                 Insert a painful tube to remove the excess fluid.  
                             Drill through the skull and remove
                        potentially useful brain matter.

I have nightmares of tripping over IV tubing and
ripping out PICC lines.   I am terrified of
dropping someone's chest tube on the floor,
                                                 of it ripping violently out of their lungs.
It's not my blood, it's some else's,
                                               and that makes it so much worse.  
                    Being responsible for another human's well-being
                                             is actually terrifying.

I just want to be helpful.  I don’t want to hurtful.  But so often,
                                         I find myself damaging the ones I love.

                                                           x

I would rather have my brain-dead sternum sawed open than
rot in some hole in the ground like my mother if it
                                                        would mean that I could be useful.
                                                   And all we really want is to be useful.
To feel something.  To be something.  
To be proud like the original sin.

Remove my ribs.  All 24 of them.  
Make them into several new women with
several new names and
                                           faces and
                                                            eye colors and
                       skin colors.
Their lives would be more beneficial than my death ever could be.

Like Eve with Lilith, replace the bad, with the seemingly good.  
                                                         Replace the soil with the body.
                                                  It all has to come from somewhere.  

                                                           x

                     How to keep the self close and yet distant from trauma.

With my poetic words, I’m looking to breathe Life
into the souls and spirits of others to prevent…
the conditions that lead one to a spiritual Death;
with directness, my messages’ clarity is clear,
as instructed in the Great Commission from Christ.

Temptations of head-scratching, clutter, confusion
and being overly clever are avoided, when Biblical
references are supplied; hopefully, my personality
shines through, despite my analytical thinking and
my spiritual creativeness of expressing Salvation.

My idealized thoughts are evident and recognizable;
now most of my readers, can easily detect the sound
of my inward voice, with its straight-forwardness
and consistency. Finding a resonance of Faith, they
can identify and love poems… that are analyzable!