Apostrophe

Apostrophe

Life’s one.
Remember how long we were confused about it?
Do you? I recall asking
Your opinion of the Fall.
You argued for myth, and I stuck to
Fact. So much, I damn near convinced myself.
The serpent was not even a snake, you said.
And I asked how you knew this.
I was there, you said.
You bit the fruit?
It was not a fruit.

And what’s so wrong with wanting to know?
This was you, and I, donkey-like, replied
Some things are a violation of the --
You lovingly stopped me, with a finger on
My stupid lips, and you whispered,
A violation of what?
Knowledge we were denied access to, I breathed,
And knew I was wrong.
Always, had been
Wrong.

Listen, dear -- you began. But I stopped you
A finger to your lips.
And just as I said We are God’s,
You proved to me that we are gods.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Worms

Worms

We went worm-hunting, we did, me and you, we did.
Thing is, when a man is to go fishing, he needs the worms.
And so, my great God, I dug ‘em as though my last three lives
Depended on a damn-good basketfull right now.

I dug, and scraped, and so did you.
Until we found a few, curling and lost. Disoriented worms,
We needed these, and more.
And you said, you looked up at me
And your breaths were little marshmallows puffed out
‘Gainst the night. Goddamn it, those breaths, all over me.

Saying, “Don’t do it.”
“Put ‘em back,” you said, and further, “Let these live.”

“Will you tell anyone I am putting these worms back into the earth?”
I asked you, and you said into the Northern Lights,
“No.”

And what was I to do?
I tucked them back into the night.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

I Know Her

I Know Her

Because across the room I know her.
A glance, just one, tells me we are on the same page.
Once someone spoke badly of her, in my hearing,
and everything within me knew they were mistaken.
She lives in a place that is beyond proving
or improving herself, to me or others.
And I would jump a cliff for her wink.
She derails me. Oh, makes me angry, yes,
now and then, but that is because I am learning
her. Learning me. I have looked at water
thirty feet down, fish oblivious ‘tween boat
and sand. She is clearer than that.
Her laugh ignites every best thing about me,
and when she arrives, I am more happy.
Than I was. Before.
It was not always like this. My life was not always
like this.

Even now, there are times, and they are frequent,
when I feel in a dream. I doubt.
And I believe that none of this should happen
to me.
But that is when I read what I have written above
and know that I am awake, and that across the room,
or across ten time zones,
I know her.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Your Love For Me

Your Love For Me

If you the hills chant and me in them run
to find naught but tree and shadow
conspiring, and an owl hooting ridicule,
What will touch my face, then?
If the moon alone lightens my retraced
sorrowing footsteps, and leaves waft
clues my beaten mind cannot discern,
What will whisper then, in my ear?
When I emerge to remember the old fears
that sent me stumbling into the darksnapping twigs and biting wind,
What will give me hope, in that moment?

What will tell me that everything
and the breeze was you, knowing sooner
to make your own way from the far side
that you might gain the clearing as I went in?
What will tell me this as I twist now,
bending to pick the burrs from myself?
What will cause me to come into the open
where you and your smile
are brighter than the moon ever was?

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008