The Real Dream

The Real Dream

I once thought in these terms
which means I guess I dreamed this way,
also. We think how we dream.
The trick is to begin dreaming different,

I guess. Not since the Big Bang
has there been a single living thing that is
black and white. My guess is that
the original mass contained more color,

than any eyeball has ever evolved to see,
yet. That I may transcend that hindrance,
is all I ask. No seagull has ever been
two colors, not while flying against a sky.

Let me see all of that.
No penguin is two colors.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

Mother Mary

Mother Mary

It’s incongruent, the amount of unbelievers
that summon her. Mother Mary, they say,
knowing full well that even her own son
thought her but a mother. [Luke 11:27-28].
In other words, nothing special.

No. That is a misinterpretation.
She breathed the breath of God, obeying it.
As did yours.
There is no such thing as nothing special
when it comes to mothers.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

Beginning of the World

Beginning of the World

For months I have been such an animal I wish I would see one.
So I could eat it. No understanding of what comes next, the
stuff in stores is rotting. Morning is day, and day, night, no one
is anywhere, and the most useless thing would be a calendar.

I walk. Wondering why I survived, and then sleep, freezing.
Keep thinking that someone has to be somewhere.
Not a moving bird in days, this is why that flicker of white
startled me. Springing to my feet, I crept, crept, half-running –

and then full out, as I rounded that caved-in building. Were you
an Olympic sprinter, when such a thing made sense? All I know
is that minutes from now, we are pulling potatoes from this fire.
And you stand, beautiful, coming over to my side of the blaze.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

Don't Wake Me

Don’t Wake Me

Caught between pinch me and no, don’t!
Because if this is a dream, you know the next line,
right?
I came to the conclusion that I prefer this state,
crazy as it is, last night at the tree lot.
Because I knew it. There I was, admiring symmetry.
Full green triangles. You drifting like a snowbank
toward the orphan section of things.
And I saw you ask the guy with the sock on his head,
how much? No mystery that one’s on sale.
It’s worse than Charlie Brown’s.
I knew then, among other things, that very night
I’d set a star on the highest twig, you holding the ladder.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

A Thousand Ears

A Thousand Ears

I lost you in that cavern of a monstrosity, mad as hell.
Me – I was mad. You – you were oblivious.
No, worse, you were the nether side of evolution.
Before sight, when worms in sea-vaults were eating
sulphur, waiting to grow fins that would become legs.
In some Guess store. So I went to the Mall Security.

Announcing your name to a thousand ears, I noticed
the gash in her nylons, and imagined the microphone
recoiling from her breath. At the top of the escalator
I saw you, below. At least one of the thousand ears,
was yours. And two of them, right then, were mine.
I had never been so happy, to know I had found you.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

Thirteenth Night

Thirteenth Night

Two weeks in all, to leave now does not seem possible.
These last midnight waves, offspring of that first afternoon.
How they roll within us, anticipation turned to experience,
memory breaking on the beach under a sea of stars.

Tomorrow we shall leave. Tomorrow we take it all away,
because we go together. Nothing will be left behind.
None of these evenings, my love, have been sunsets.
It’s the world that moved and spun as we kicked the sand.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009

Caw

Caw

Fog of the day in mind, I punch three digits
and leave the building. Alarm set.
Clicking yet another device a lock lifts,
and almost to my car, I stop walking.

So assured of its rightness. Free of constraint.
You will never get from me why I stopped.
But overhead, as black as the set sun
it repeated itself. And looking down, I listened.

I knew what it was, as anyone would, but
for the first time I wanted to know the words.
What sort of declaration was this? Why expend
so much energy while flying, if useless?

For an answer, I looked, but there was only sky.
Now driving, I reach forward to kill the radio.
Oh, to hear that sound again.
We assign three letters to what no book contains.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2009