Familiarity

Familiarity

Imagine, if you will, a man and a woman, asleep.
Snoring, dreaming, resting, they awaken
To find another next to them.
Not the one they fell asleep with.

A man, given the right conditions, will, at times,
Find this most agreeable.
A woman, never.
There are no such conditions.

And this, my friends, is the great incongruity.
The very reason the world itself is
Tilted on its axis.

Cyclones, seasons, hurricanes.
All are caused by this.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Looking Behind

Looking Behind

I

Especially on quiet, satiated evenings it will happen.
Walking down the street I will suddenly stop
And turn toward a sense of myself approaching me.
Not of being followed or stalked, but quite the opposite.
The impossibility of pursuit. As though I alone exist
And my steady apparition.

II

Some say this is evidence of a deep disconnect.
Others, of over-connection. Various studies conclude
I exhibit the first sign of lunacy. Bollocks to them all!
Researchers will never understand until they do it.
The looking behind thing.
But they won’t.

III

For the record, my premonition has never proven false.
Believe me, I am quite wary of acquiring
An obsession with emptiness.
Just know that if you laugh I may join you,
Smiling. For I am never looking behind
Seeing nothing.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Snipping

Snipping

Me and Jim Conley in biology class far
More stoned than the frog spread before us
Would peer with the gravity of surgeons
During a bypass and one of us would nod
Absolving the scissor-holder of all malpractice
So that snip snip snip we’d collectively sever
Long tubes and squiggly things quietly laughing
As our teacher droned on and closer to the heart
With a terminal cut we’d stop it and stare
Just like God would or worse yet two gods
Before filing out to our next assignment
As bells rang and nothing had ever happened.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Upon Graduating

Upon Graduating

I hope for you a considered life
In increasing measure.
I hope for you joy in vocation. Calling.
Love.
I hope for you, perhaps above all things,
Love.
I hope for you, prosperity.
The kind that does not trust in money.
I hope for you peace.
The kind that does not depend upon anything
Outside your body. What they call “inner”.
I wish you affluence, based on influence.
I hope for you a life of self-actualization.
I hope that you learn truth as a process.
Your knowledge tentative, capable of displacement.
May regret be the last “r” word in your vocabulary.
I wish you to never harm anyone else.
I wish you recovery, from harm that comes to you.
Joy from a kiss.
Joy from pushing a child on a swing, or throwing
Water balloons.
I wish you a rumpled collar, from time to time.
Bleary, teary eyes, and work.
I hope you no laziness.
A kitten in hand, kissed.
I wish you bills that are paid in full.
And a funeral well-attended.
Aspen leaves, whispering.
And you, hearing.
A life well-done.
A considered one.
Life considered, I hope for you.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Fran's

Fran’s

For the hundredth time over the years
I turn, and say “John.” My friend looks.
We are crossing College, on Yonge.
The name is all that needs to be said for us both
To breathe in a new appreciation for air and afternoon.
Aimless walking and air, in the afternoon.

A favorite place for John, in Toronto,
Was this place.
Or is.
Whichever.
Perhaps he still goes there for breakfast.

Both of us wonder the same, and walk.
Not talking. But farther on,
Or even before the nether curb
We again look at each other.

He is not in there today.

John is not at Fran’s. He is a decade dead.
And there are some chairs that he may have sat in
Still sitting there, as they did,
When he did.

To neither of us, does it seem right
That a chair, or a bench, should be around
And John not.
While we keep walking.
All kinds of other things to think about today.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

John, if you’re out there, click → HERE.

The Extra Ones

The Extra Ones

We are told that he chose five smooth stones.
Young, and ruddy faced, in 1 Samuel 17:40.
I would have imagined jagged ones to cause
greater cranial damage, but who am I?
This sling was not even the type you draw back on.
It was the kind you whirl about your head.
I know, because there was an artist’s rendition
in the book my mother read, as my eyes fell shut.

So an army cowers, as the boy runs forward,
taunting this oaf! This day the Lord will hand you
over to me. He kicks the dirt and spits, And I’ll
strike you down and cut off your head. Shaking,
he shouts at a helmet that weighs more than him,
The birds shall eat you, placing a stone in the pouch.
Philistine laughter shakes the very rainclouds
loose over the heads of Israel, as the air sings.

And what I love most is not the part where he cuts
off the head. Nor even the part where Saul asks,
Whose son are you, young man?
I love the fact that David took four extra stones.
Ones he did not know he did not need.
The scene that is not illustrated in any bedtime book,
and the sound, ping-ping-ping-ping, denting helmets,
as the Philistines run for the hills.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

A Rare Thing

A Rare Thing

On a park bench it happened.
And telling you now seems an injustice.
Yet I must tell it.
Please, it is not at all you, or me, but words
That fail us both.

I was so down, so down.
You know when your eyes are so closed
That you forget your own name?
And then realize that no one is asking
For it?

Feeling a presence, I opened one.
And there it was, a sparrow.
This is not yet the rare thing.

The bird stayed.
Walked to and fro, and chirped once.
To offer my silly hand would be foolish
But I did.

None of this is yet the rare thing, but
Into it, my hand, the sparrow hopped.
And as I encircled its life, closing my fist
It stayed. It…

As I watched, closed its eyes.
It is the one thing birds do not do.
And in shame, I closed mine again.

I knew then that my sorrow had vanished.
Taken wing. But for confirmation,
I raised that sparrow up to my ear.

Will I tell you that it spoke to me?
No, for it did not. But even if the bird had
Counseled me, that would not have been as
Rare as what happened next.

I opened my hand, and it stayed there,
Soon hopping back to its little perch.
Refusing to leave,
Until I did.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008