Sex

Sex

In the beginning there was an expanse, a firmament.
A void, and it wanted to be against something softer.
This will aid in procreation was neither a before or after
thought. When it comes to thinking, we were haunted.

Forever. By desire. The greatest mystery does not even
call a Creator to the stage. Everything, the very reason
you are reading this, has most to do with one word
-- fourteenth from the top. Survival of the wanted.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

This Meeting

This Meeting

_____ must have expected nearly nothing.
Overlooking what I looked like, she asked me things.
After a fashion, we already knew each other -- but
I had always feared the fleshy part of it all, very much.

How would she react to my… under-stature.
My imposture, my lack of looking or acting my age.
The irreverence I am prone to exhibiting.
I had rehearsed certain anecdotes and mannerisms.

For this meeting, yes, I did. I had been in rehearsal.
She healed me with a story about a horse named Bree.
Her lips moved, and I heard many things, but her eyes
-- her eyes did things to me that made me grow up.

I had never known a horse more clearly. More horsely.
Tasting her skin with every word I leaned into a tornado.
A hurricane of desire. I followed up with a tale of my cat.
By then there was no table between us. I blame her.

I will always fault her for the sudden lack of boundaries.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Much Like A Haunting

Much Like A Haunting

In a bigger-is-better world thirty feet high and twice
as wide turns not enough heads. Tragedies fail
unless off the scale, or involving our dearest. Mice
in a maze we follow what's ahead if it has a tail.

Latest and greatest wins, if no thought is engaged.
Stopping to think only when something is killing
us in our tracks. Stumbling along, the while caged
in a pail -- over the sides, abundance is spilling.

Life itself conspires to tell us that what matters most
in this journey is nearest, closest our wanting.
Says it thirty feet high, and to the extent that we host
such untruth, we perish.  Much like a haunting.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

So Be It

So Be it

If trees dress up in green, and an unclouded sky is blue
you are where you always imagined it best, Pastor Ness.
And you very nearly convince me, heretic that I am.
When Jesus spoke of childlike faith, he wasn't prepared
for how literally you would take him at his word.

Your favourite phrase, "Yes, Amen" means so be it.
You were never the dashboard saint, Clarence.
You were ever and always, the real deal.
So, pray for me, now that you are in the Kingdom.
Be the evidence of what my mind refuses to believe.

If anyone could help me with what I cannot accept
as truth -- so be it. Tap the one to your right hand side:
[whisper] The lad has some hard-thought doubts about it
but he means well, and always has. It might require
something simple, like that bit you wrote in the sand once.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

One Reflection

One Reflection

Neither one of us will ever forget the stream itself.
Thirst will do that to a person. Single-mindedness
following a parched sense of loss. Loss. Moisture.

We drank our heads full, and saw our faces there
scattered. Would we have died without that water?
When everything settled, the question did, as well.

But tonight I am breathing into your ear, realizing--
I saw one reflection when we survived. Not my own.
It took a disaster for me to see who I love the most.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Reading

Reading

You either have it or not, much like vocal ability.
The pulsating love of text, the chemical rush.
The euphoria. Feel of pages, smell of it all.
Endless wonder of next, coupled with who says it best.
You remove a dustjacket -- to see the spine of it.
"X" off certain days on the calendar [local used book sale].
Equate a best vacation with a memorable book.

You either love to read, or have bad memories of school.
Find yourself recalling the exhilaration of an assignment.
Or not. Homework? Involving some quiet time?
Interestingly enough -- this has become my specialty.
A preferred weekend, to be thusly immersed in genius.
Send me to my chamber with a tome. Please.
I put my spine back on, when choosing a bookmark.

You either are innately silent in a library, or are not smart.
Humanity squeezed every ounce of its being onto these shelves.
Shut your gob in that presence, and read something, fool.
If nothing else, re-read the first sentence of this poem.
It may seem at first that I am equating reading with singing.
I am not. A step further friend. 
If you do not read, neither should you speak.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Sleeping

Sleeping

The last time I fell asleep I abandoned myself.
Drifting off to something I do not understand, in the remotest sense.
At a certain point, and only for necessity's sake, an alarm bell
wakened me.
I would have chosen otherwise. No alarm.
I had a good movie going on, and much popcorn in hand.
Thing is, it is not so much this falling asleep business we fear.
It's the awakening.

But what if we skip that part? And just keep sleeping.
I'm not sure if I can really imagine a better scenario.
Mind: I've never been a "morning person".
Maybe you like wrestling the day. Me, I like wrestling sheets!
If someone were to tell me that "keep sleeping" = sadness?
Well, I would argue with that person.
Might even hire a lawyer to do a better job of it.

My cat seems to have a better handle on this.
People. What the the hell do you do when you wake up?
Go to work?
What if you could just continue on in the levels of crazy Awareness
of your dreams. [<-- No question mark. No interrogative].
I vote for the endless LSD trip.

So when I die? Please omit the part in your eulogies where
you lament the cessation of my constant struggle with life.
I'm sleeping.
I'm quite sure I've never been happier.

- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Fire

Fire

Amazing how our analogies change with time
while time itself refuses all such metamorphosis.
In the early days of our love I thought you a fire.
Now, decades on -- you turn dear -- to water.

I was shamed at first, to think such thoughts.
Finding myself more often than not seeing eyes
deep and clear as a mountain stream, answering.
No. A lake, where the bottom is seen from the top.

None of the blaze is gone, but a desire to drink
seems to replace the need to consume.
Perhaps I matured into what you already knew.
Nothing that burns would exist, but for water.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Salinger

Salinger

It's not like the guy wrote 105 books or something.
[Who does?]
Yet just tonight, via a friend and would-be lover
I realized that of all novelists, I want to hear more
from this guy.

A posthumous, as-yet-undiscovered manuscript
would do the trick. Hell, I'd settle for bedside notes.
Scribblings.

What really knocks me out is that a man as reticent
and reclusive as J.D. was, can yet hold me in thrall:
-- ever wanting.
 
Thing is, what he gave us was so good.
You want to call him on the phone and just ask:
Why? Are you holden out? Are you?

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

300 Othello Avenue

300 Othello Avenue

Perhaps every university campus has a similar thing.
An edifice, a place where everything nightly happens.

Even a compass would be confused, chilly, quivering.
All directions pointing to that table that defies NEWS.

-- where we sat or lay upon it in the kitchen laughing.
Kitchen. Who cooked there? Not a living soul. But ate.

Cried. Hugged. "Studied" quote unquote, snow falling
on a driveway that only dreamed of holding a vehicle.

Simple times and ideals -- sleepy alarm clocks ringing.
Wine and beer in a cellar, and decades to learn things.

Just tonight I walked past, and scratched my bald spot
thinking -- I've never experienced such euphoria since.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Respect

Respect

I eschew cliches, so forget opposites attract.
Let us not wink, you were the one for me.
Even magnets come together, properly faced.
We are more than good polarization, tonight.

Unpredictable -- this love like roses growing.
I feel like I am drinking in the sun with you.
Let me offer an explanation that begins with r.
Ending in t, and far better than the word right.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Revelation

Revelation

Never mind the Bible's conclusion -- same title.
He watched for the slightest twitch of an eyebrow.
Waiting for rejection, listening to the breathing.
Any slight change could indicate a grave problem.

Takes time for an appropriate response or otherwise.
Expecting tears, he met with dryness and silence.
Never a good sign, either thing.  Still, he would wait.
A man on all fours in an unlit cave, naked.

The coffee, done it's gurgling down, was finished.
She poured two cups, and set them on the table.
Sliding one towards him she lingered, eyes shut.
Her hand said what no words could. I will stay here.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Trouble?

Trouble?

Lottery winnings can kill a person.
Booze. Smoking. Random sex, or
walking in the middle of the street.
Loss of control, what is it, but danger.

People told me you were trouble
with a capital Don't Go There.
Old and foolish, I saw something else.
Maybe the pilgrim soul in you, sailing.

Definitely more than perfume.
More like the reason I want to smell it.
Not so much the abyss, but the entire
inclination to jump into it.

When you spoke of your loves, I was
transfixed by the zero men mentioned.
In my most audacious moment of life
I felt, somehow, I could speak to you.

And I did, like a lottery winner, I did.
Drinking, breathing, walking star-eyed
through the middle of you, since --
Learning. No one else knows anything.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

An Otter

An Otter

Creeping quietly enough you could have seen it, too.
I went through a very severe period of depression.
A chemical imbalance, this was the diagnosis.

Looking for a cliff high enough, I stumbled on a stream.
The poets do it this way -- that was my actual thought.
Much water in the lungs, this will surely work.

Should I disrobe first? That note I left on the fridge.
For a moment I wondered if I said everything necessary.
My shirt on a branch, snapped it -- CRACK --

A ripple in the water startled me, an otter looking up.
It quit with the fussing on its belly, and peered at me.
Then, diving away, I felt waves rush against my chest.

A chemical imbalance, this was the diagnosis.
I went through a very severe period of depression.
Creeping quietly enough you could have seen it, too.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Issues

Issues

When you mentioned that you had a few
I admit, my first thought was magazines.
Followed by random bleeding.

But to find out it was about me all along?
Darling -- I would have instantly renewed
my subscription to Modern Mindreader.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Sans Suffering

Sans Suffering

When a young boy shoots a robin
[as they all do] via slingshot
there is an unthought thought amok.
It's all about death sans suffering.
He thinks it, approaching his quarry.

There he finds much squirming.
A beak saying nothing, but distended.
Legs a'kick, entrails exposed.
Much death delayed.
Beaucoup de morte a retarde.

And I say to you that if in that moment
the lad does not throw the weaponry from his body
he shall find it a hard thing indeed
to become a man.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Late Night Toast

Late Night Toast

You read the title, and think
-- nocturnal alcoholics --
One more nip at the bottle.

But the truth is, one snore
woke the other.
And turning to her, he said:

Jesus Christ, are you as hungry
as I am right now?

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

you make me

you make me

believe in electricity / see junk in clouds
laugh at the simple / not fear crowds
wish every day were ten / gasp for air

dream good dreams / miss your scent
salivate wet / not regret money spent
fortunate beyond measure / hard there

own the world and environs / think deep
walk slightly behind you / quietly weep
long for your ankles / hate your enemy

love the next sentence / conquer fear
know what art is / smile, when near
surround who I am / me, me, me --- me

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

The Stone

The Stone

chill into his teeth rattled
mountain stream traversed
he found a slice of bliss

this was placed here for her
making a way to his pocket
-- she needs to have this

back in the boat feeling
the white equator in his hand
faint ridge needing no eye

two blackened halves
drawn together before either
knew why

-- he became a believer
-- she needs to have this

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Arcturus: Two Ages

 
Arcturus: Two Ages

On a night, follow the arm of The Big Dipper, left
and down. The next brightest thing you observe
has two ages, thirty-seven -- and many billions.

Much larger than our own sun, and older, bright
before anything ever known, was. Exploding
prior to a flagella quivering on Earth -- it burned.

Two ages. Thirty-seven -- and many billions.
The first has everything to do with your eyes.
The latter, a reminder, that the universe itself

is doing
quite well -- whether
we exist
or not.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Desire: The Impossible

Desire: The Impossible

There is no power equal to what we want.
The excuses that come to mind, are just that.
For good or ill, we end up doing what we want.

We do what we do. How silly to think otherwise.
You have within you the potential to accomplish
the very impossible.

Whether you will or not, is desire, nothing else.
The truest thing in the Bible, is Satan's lust.
A want for something -- contrary.

Freedom -- free will -- something of a curse?
Everything done, since this inception
-- an all-too-human eventuality.

Before any lung breathed air, Something
decided that the rest of anything
should return upon desire.

Think on this, friend, for longer than a moment.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

What I Am

What I Am

Passionate when meeting passion.
Fascinated with fascination.
Interested in interest.
Found when lost.

A garbled cry of a crow unsettles me
for want of translation.
Sudden alignment of cityscape
causes me to stop walking --
Pages in a beloved book, to cry.

To me, each day is an easel --
Something unfathomable is being drawn
and the scent of firewood is freedom.
Music moves me. I am unpretentious.
I mean no one any harm.

All of the above are exactly what I am.
But re-reading those stanzas, I pause.
None of it means as much as is said
without someone I love, agreeing.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Velvet?

Velvet?

There has never been another time
I wished a word, not finding it.
SufferingFromACurelessDisease I
For instance, pristine forearms
followed by otherside of knees.
HopeThereIsNeverAnyFundingFor
Lip on lip on inner thigh.
Just below the throat : no dictionary
shows a word for this tactile whisper.
MuchLessACure--I SufferOn
YouContinueToSufferThis -- her her.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Everything

Everything

Smell the burning oak, trail elusive
-- smoke joining atmosphere.
Hear the rain, photos on the mantel.
Do not open the closet and see her.
Make breakfast, one needs to eat.
Walk, hating every unspoken echo.
Sew your buttons back into place.
Leave those beloved records alone.
A magazine arrives, but not for him.
Weep. Heave when tears are no more.
She is gone. His own breath stinks
thrown upon the scarf, ghost within.
She was ______. He falls to the floor.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

The Third Ailment

The Third Ailment

One thing worse than not talking to yourself
is two people staring. Look at those geese
or headlines, none of these becoming words.
The second is when you speak and do think
someone hears, your own ears wanting to
be on a non-existent head.
But a third ailment blares louder than others.

It is a jet streaming an atmosphere with white.
Looking up, you see the cause -- but no one
ever sips coffee up there. No person snores.
A woman asking for a refill. Another, a pillow.
The pilot announces a revised arrival time.
None of this exists for you. It is a malady --
or as one writer put it, "world without fiction."

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

so smooth

so smooth

tree-bark anger gritty decibels asphalt
your hand in mine along the boardwalk

cat-tongue bricks wind-on-water gravel
your neck and the laughter in the throat

elephant the moon burlap roof-shingles
you are the opposite of everything rough

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

The Greatest Lie

The Greatest Lie

Our first memories have a precedent --
intimations of something better than a struggle.
Otherwise, we would not breathe a second time.

These can be hard to recall, but good living,
Life, intends for you to make the effort.
Entropy denotes a good start. But we forget.

Light and darkness are not absolutes,
they are contingencies. Accidents.
So easy to look up and see black, at night.

What if the greatest lie was a sudden appearance
of light, at a certain time. Shining upon what.
A preferred galaxy?
-- darkness, perhaps our creation.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

The Room

The Room

You sat on my lap and my own jeans got wet from whatever
was happening in you. Yet, nothing happened, of it all.
You laughed at my jokes and even then it seemed you were
amused with my capabilities, instead of with what I had said.
We dined upon the best food and yet we were hungry.

You said you had never had a better time, and I doubted you.
Because I had. [Had a better time.]
And if I did, surely you did. Much better looking than I was.
And younger. And capable of so much more, than I am.
Perhaps we should blame the room. As in, what were we doing,

in the same one?

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Old Mr. Prickly Pin

Old Mr. Prickly Pin
[For Beatrix]

You know that the blue is clashing so.
Tell us all who loaned you those shoes.
Hiding the sides of them now, are you?

Not a bit of it...

Brother, how your heels were clicking.
The jigs reeled, and you swung many a miss.
Whence the reticence now then, Prickly?

Let me catch my breath...

The grandness of it all caught up to you?
Rising above your station you were. Tell us.
Thinking yourself above the species rodent?

Please, lads… [Accepts a drink offered.]

The last one you swung sailed off in a swoon.
By God, the one before fainted straightaway.
I daresay I see sweat on your whiskers.

Hush. Give me some air, you imbeciles.

He grabs a girl as the fiddler strings his bow.
My back paws were sore is all.
The sun rose before Prickly danced them all.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

No and Yes

No and Yes

Was I wrong to question the wobbly nature
of your No as a waffling in the maybe?
A quivering in the perhaps of it all?

The eight yeses of your fingertips on my
back, thumbs reaching into heaven
say what I refuse to conclude, yet know.

I make you mine, just then.
An iceberg hitting the unpenetrated vessel.
How good that I am already, forever yours.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Take Me To The Mercury

Take Me To The Mercury

My therapist says I need more time in the cooker.
A decent living, this talking is. She's an advocate
of electricity as a last resort.
When all the while I've been saying Take me to
The Mercury --
and I'll be fine.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Blue

Blue

Green of the sky, green of your eyes.
Blue of the grass, blue.

Of treetops purple seems right.
A boat passing, of no colour
rips waves of grey.

What can I see, for what it is
without you?

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

The Black Part

The Black Part

There are those photos so vivid you can see
the camera with an iris as its target reflected.

Or is it the pupil? -- Yes, the black part.
Someone clicking a shutter is captured.

Tonight, as a certain ray from the marquee lit
yours, I saw myself there. And it was no photo.

This was the real thing, the darkest part of you.
You answered a question with only your eyes.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

These Arguments

These Arguments

We have had some Academy award-winners, for sure.
And that last one had a built-in acceptance speech.
A red carpet made so because of blue hitting oxygen.

You would have drawn it from me, the very blood,
but mercy had me passing out -- a terrific screenplay.
I fainted from exertion, shouting I hate these arguments.

In the morning I awoke on the couch, and there was
a blanket around me. But I had not placed it there.
And instantly I knew, you had won yet another Oscar.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

In Lieu of Rhetoric

In Lieu of Rhetoric

To be separately evangelized is a common thing.
Tonight, together, a trifle unique.
If at any time a cosmic occurrence occurred,
would you agree it involved our eyes?

How, without a spoken word, we knew enough
to not speak one? Good listeners, we did so --
Until my faint smile was courage, and you said
The love you speak of seems very conditional.

My right hand upon your left, as lamplights
guide us home to our adulterous lair, Love --
The entirety of my being is so filled with words
that I opt for silence, and your wondrous hearing.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Gravity Gone

Gravity Gone

You cannot press against me, bringing worry
into my leisure. This is not all I have to say --

As I think of it, the nights when your embrace
was a trick, are over. You were ever, a moon.

Using me. Granted, we all have a hidden side.
I wish I had seen yours, because what I got

was cratered. And so, un-spinning, I send you.
-- why could you not have turned toward me?

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Scatterbrain

Scatterbrain

It was your voice, darling, rising from below
that brought me to the balcony. Lock the safe.
I do not know how to leave a room on vacation?
Lingering there, I watched you reach your chair

as someone paddled out to a then cresting wave.
Watched him ride it to a shore near your feet.
Some manner of dance session on the beach
caught my attention before I grabbed my towel.

Leaving, halfway down the hall, I remembered --
returning to 409 as the elevator arrived and left.
Without even trying to do it you show me. Always.
The three words I owe you tonight, duly earned.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Birds

 
Birds

One thing about birds.
Not a one of them smiles.
Not ever.

Yet, give me wings
and I imagine my face ripping
off from the smiling alone.

Not to mention the wind itself
hollowing out my jowls
as I swoop and dive

defying what I know about gravity
in a macabre smile
thinking thoughts

no bird, anywhere, has
ever thunk.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Contagious

Contagious

Again, the best day, yesterday, happened not.
Will Shakespeare would have fashioned it thus
as a grinning lover leaned forward to hear of it.
He would switch around those last two words --
creating a scenario less tragic. Adding a sense
of poetry -- diverting thoughts of rats and plague.

Truth dimmed via language. This, I allow, is a gift.
In keeping, as a curtain rises on a morrow's sun,
two words regarding your own talent warrant a bow.
My dear, I have caught from you a wanted disease.
An ever unfurrow'ed brow upon what shall come
after a shared breakfast. Your optimism infects me.

- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --

Papers

Papers

I shudder to think how different things might have been.
Leaving the office five seconds later, everything ruined.
A slower elevator. A last minute phone call. A Friday off.

Thoughts on the weekend, I ran to my car, coat-whipped.
Glancing, I saw you fight with those papers, one caught.
Another, winding towards me, I grabbed without thinking.

Holding it, I watched you leave the earth several times.
Somehow you snatched up all the others, with a grace.
I walked over, handing you the most errant of them all.

You pulled a lovely shock of brunette away, to thank me.
Tonight, twenty years later, hands in that hair, I whisper.
We thank God for many things -- I thank Him for the wind.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2012 --