Victoria

Victoria

I will walk you, I will love you.
I will kiss your trees, roots to branch.
I will savor the flavors of Pagliacci’s
with my love. Together we will browse Munro’s
followed by a diet-ending visit to Murchie’s.
A stroll along the harbor, drinks at Charles Dickens
or The Sticky Wicket. Endless are the joys
you bestow, Victoria.
That same night we will tell certain buskers
to get a real job, and throw change to others.
Laughing, let me thank you in advance.
Yes. Yes. I’ll bring an umbrella.
No. No. We will.
We will walk love kiss
savor you,
Victoria.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Like Clove

Like Clove

Around one I hoped you would be the last to leave.
I had never talked to anyone like this, like we did,
and you were still there at two. I watched as you
quickly gathered your things, girlfriends tugging.
Longing in your eyes as we shook hands?
A feeling of not wanting to open mine ever again.

When I finally did, there was your scarf left behind,
and me wanting to hang myself with it. Fearfully,
the myth of you mingled with this scent of clove.
Thread and fiber I shall keep, one day wrapping
the back of your neck and drawing to my lips
yours. Giving to you what is not mine anymore.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Dripping

Dripping

Cheapest frame in the world.
Hanging that new Renoir print gave me a sliver.
How something so small can hurt so bad I’ll never –
never mind, I need the tweezers.

There’s you singing, singing something, splashing
and me fumbling in the cabinet.
Where in the hell are those damn –
never mind, I found something else.

I found myself arrested, seeing you
not seeing me, watch. You cavorting with innocent
devilry, behind that frosted door --
never mind, I quickly forgot my pain.

You slid it open and groped for the very towel,
my numb self handed over. You dripped
from your hair drops I would drink, and did –
never mind. This was all a century ago.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Hum And Thrum

Hum and Thrum

I first heard the phrase in Sandburg, who
claimed that a singing copper wire, in a gerundive
fashion, used these words to summarize its purpose.

Love, war, money, fighting, tears, toil, desire,
death and laughter, all crowded the passageways
and left in their wake, this electric noise.

Since first reading his Under A Telephone Pole
I cannot tell the times I have stood, hand on chest,
marveling that all of these pass through me daily --

“In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn
and the wet drying,” while no one, myself included,
from Galesburg to Chicago, hears a thing.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

When I Kissed You

When I Kissed You

I thought I knew soft.
Knew what it was. How my cereal
Gets when milk stays too long. How
Earth becomes mud. Or decisions
Falter. How the stock market collapses.

Things we thought solid, evaporate.

But then --
No. Before that.
Your eyes.

There is no calamity your gaze
Does not correct.
Your intention, harden.

As I lean towards you, do not move away.
This is meant to put a platform under me.

When I kissed you on the lips
Several newspapers stopped their clatter.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Blackness

Blackness

Black’s got to be the most serious color.
Is it a color?
And I don’t mean skin.
I mean existence.

Existence, whatever the hell it is,
Is black.
Take away the planets. Stars.
Suns.

What’s left?
Whiteness?
Are you retarded?
→ BLACKNESS!

Existence is either a giant eyelid
Or [what is more likely, and what I
Suspect is closer to the truth] B
L a c k n e s s.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Wallpaper

Wallpaper

The wallpaper saved us.
I suppose we have never argued, like tonight.
There were times when you may have had a point,
But mostly no. Or, I cut you off mid-yap.
But my God you were a grizzly with threatened cubs.
My fingers, tapping the table, were all I had.

You stormed off, as you should have.
At that moment there was not much more to growl,
And the windows were fogging up. That slamming
Of the bedroom door made me writhe in my skin
Till I faced the wall. And my proof-reading mind
Found the out of sync fleur-de-lys.

Or whatever they are called. The paisley things.
They do not match.
And I remembered not only the laughter,
But how the whole sheet fell on us as we placed it.
Back then when Love usurped the tornado warnings
And we lost our patio furniture to the vortex.

When your breath was lilac and wonder of wonders,
Mine, too. When we both thought us attractive.
When our square words fit the round holes, and I am
Walking toward that door you slammed, minutes ago.
I am going to love you tonight. Some things
Do not line up, but goddamn it, they stick!

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Inscription

Inscription

Who was more startled, the old cat or myself?
We both awoke as the door chimes let me in.
I am escaping rain. The cat, jaw on paws
Too tired to yawn, glared.

Fabulous used bookstore. Truly serendipitous.
Look at how this Daniel Deronda yields itself.
Falling open, and staying there. Inviting.
Taking nothing, it shared.

That frontispiece, oh sacred title page.
I read, To Christine, Merry Christmas, 1983.
I know at once, a non-smoker, not Jewish.
Perhaps twenty when I was.

I buy the book, this talisman. What do I know?
Tired of George Eliot. Rhymes with “pristine.”
The rain has stopped, so I leave with her.
A green eye winks, jaw on paws.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

The Up-Arrow

The Up-Arrow

It was the click of your heels on the
marble
foyer
floor
and the whole open-concept ocean breeze
wafting through that first
threw me off my mark and
then I pressed that button that lit up.

I spread wide the curtains to the night.
Open
the balcony
door
you said, and we watched a cruise-ship dock
while laughter floated up from
our very chairs below, still warm.

Turning, I realized one should be at least
alive
or
dead
because in the few seconds it took you to
throw your blouse on that chair, I knew my
ghost was not going to survive.

Later, in your arms, I turned your face to mine
and
just
then
felt for the first time in my life that from the clicking
to the pressing and the spreading and the
dying, that all of this –
All of it, was why I first breathed.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Pointing

Pointing

Suns and moons weaker getting always.
Once faster than me ran. Then my
walking I look back to her. Three suns
she fall not moving and wait. Small one,
no white water and wait. We wait.

Three moons now I know and draw.
When not move ride on this. Flapping.
I see and now draw. And I know.
After hunt, when fire move and heat
and moon I bring here and will point.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Carvings

Carvings

Here is the rain-eaten picnic table where
we carved our names. You carved yours
and I, mine. While I cut, you told me
that forever, as long as gravity rained
drops on wood, for that long your true
love would continue, eroding things
that were neither you nor I. Seasons
would cease to divide years before
the half of your love would trace a
circuit of a quarter of the heavens.
One-tenth of what either of us felt
would cease to matter at all were
we to remember but this minute.
But I have remembered. And I
am rubbing my hands across
your promise, which clouds
have eaten so thoughtless.
Your name lingers, mine
is less carved now, and
chipped. I sit here and
wonder. Where are you
today? And how did
we believe that time
so favored us that
we’d be exempt
from what all
lovers’ tables
have known
since knives
were held
in lovers’
hands?

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008