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 --

Blinking Light

Blinking Light

Do not be alarmed as we approach some turbulence --
The stewardess, as she handed me the pillow, smiled.
I placed it behind all of your dreams, hearing a sigh.

My own [dreams] kept looking at you, as you slept on.
The shaking did not waken you. Neither the sudden
crying of a child. The past few days have been hectic.

Beyond, the beacon of the wingtip flashed against
the dark. Hair of your nodding head mingled in the sky.
And I wondered what this must look like from below.

Someone in a yacht, sipping chablis, hearing a rumble
looks up and sees a light. Knowing nothing about a
marriage on a sandy beach, a noon from this moment.

-- common with nighttime approaches to Montego Bay.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

Feels Like Home

Feels Like Home
[For T & H]

Friends come in when everything is out.
When significant days of the year aren't
all they should be, someone in your life
knows what to do.

And if they are true, if it's real, they realize
that the important word is not know.
It is do.
I'm trying now to think of the right phrase.

A gift I can return to them.
Something that summarizes a book of
undeserved goodness. And the perfect
thing has just come to me --

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

Christmas, Eve

Christmas, Eve

Legend has it that evolution is less than a theory
or even a myth. But that begs the question --
What does legend mean?

No people on the Earth, and then one of them
listen to a snake talk. Later, she will blame Adam
for her decision.

So the story says. As coincidence would have it
only one of us bear the name of these characters.
You.

And it's Christmas, Eve. Would it be too much
for me to ask you [the kids are sleeping]
to think of me, as that apple?

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

Open Concept

 
Open Concept

Life. It succeeds at every attempt to throw
itself at yourself. I remember now, initially
advocating that modicum of privacy.
A keeping of one's things to one's self, with
minimal reference to architectural theory.
You finally nodded to those partitions
the many hard walls I suggested best.
Forbidden grounds, protecting better ideas.

How I wish I was silent, that you had spoken
sooner. And I wish I had listened, earlier.
Along with the regret of thinking my secrets
the greater of us both, head in hands, I
need you now. I chased you away, revelation
leveling me. -- Come back, flawed woman.
The house of me cannot stand without you
holding the walls of my own unspoken past.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

Terrarium

Terrarium

As my father set the thing up I watched,
heart set on a bike, a Mizuno catcher's mitt.
Confusion trebled with the dumping of ants.

This will teach you about industry, production.
And it did, it did that. Day after day, tunneling
against the sides, they carried. Endless lifting.

A frantic community intent on thriving thrived
under my gaze. But I hated the invisibility of
needless desire. The lack of leisure -- love.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

My Skin

My Skin

Today is my 48th birthday. So I rubbed my face
where the beard is, there, salted with grey.
My hands are so soft. Five decades
nigh on, everything is smooth. Supple, even.

I conjure a pair of leather gloves that would feel
as smooth against this face, this skin. Worn
to a frazzle -- in tatters, discarded long ago,
they would have not endured this examination.

But today my own hands feel the face that kissed
the cat of my childhood. The nose that breathed
the air of my beginnings. The lips that mouthed
the first words of my life. The eyes that saw it all.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --

Sharks

Sharks

They do what they do.
If you fling a ballast of blood and meat
they will circle, breaching the surface
in a pursuit of existence.

But I threw nothing out that I know of.
And yet you surrounded me, grinning
like a shark would -- feasting on
what Darwin himself would never

attribute to a survival of the fittest.

-- © Ciprianowords, Inc. 2011 --