The First Time

What would you say to my
I love you?
For the first time.
We once wondered.

Tell me to take it back?
Rewind the tape? Or
Say it again? Louder?
As I recall, there was indeed
An echo, but never louder.
Not once did you hear it
Louder, than the first time.

Blackwing

Poison lies in wait, not about
To fill three trumpets with spit
While someone beats a drum. Not
Quite. It knows to tread softly up

Cranberry Lake

An August sun baked our canoe
Where we had beached it, in the sand.
And, taking your small hand
Toward shade, I led you.

Or was it you, me,
Who followed, who led,
When gaily laughing, you said
This bunch here are portabellini?

This bunch of what? said I
Dumb as three brooms.
These here, see the mushrooms
‘Neath the tree where they lie?

How do you know this?
When I stopped you were shaken -
Thinking me angry, mistaken

human

i looked up.
they had made their webs
in the rafters,
these two silent architects.
so i knocked them into a foil pan
where they lightly clattered.
exoskeletons, spinning
and disoriented.
so i sprayed aerosol on them
in great amounts, until
swimming to the center of the pan
they found each other,
grappled,
and broke their own necks.
i heard it.
two faint snaps.
i did not look up

Ouija

So I turned to a road atlas, in lieu of your
Vanilla limbs. My finger along interstates
Ran and I said, These are her veins.
In blue, lakes and rivers showed their wet
Spots and again, my fingers, searching,
Sought.

Where is a park, where we can hide away?
I’m not familiar, I complained, and just then
I felt, Ouija-like, an assistance.
Here. Follow me, and
I followed, sleep-walking but never more
Awake. Here, further a bit.

You and I were in Green River.
I said I am a stranger here.

Two Decisions

Look. I walk towards you, and the
World gets closer. Or further away.
Which is it? Did you take a step
Back?
See. I look up as I approach
And the clouds scatter. Or form.
Which is it? Did you take a step
Back?
Hear. There was a bird that sang
Just then. Or there was silence.
I am not sure now, did you
Hear it, too?

While that fountain played with us
And threw us in and out, I made
What is known as a decision.

Aneurysm

This is how I want it to be. While reading Hardy
I turn to her and tell her how good she would
Look in that blue dress she did not buy today.
And I see that smirk, the one that knows
I will get it for her tomorrow anyway. But just as
She adjusts the pillow behind her head, reaching
For her fourth volume of Proust, the same thing
Happens to her. And we lean into each other,
The calico cat not even stirring at our feet
As our books fall forward.
And that candle she lit, flickers.

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Apostrophe

Life’s one.
Remember how long we were confused about it?
Do you? I recall asking
Your opinion of the Fall.
You argued for myth, and I stuck to
Fact. So much, I damn near convinced myself.
The serpent was not even a snake, you said.
And I asked how you knew this.
I was there, you said.

To My Princess

I’ve heard he rides quite well, and in the sun
his armor gleaming
Would blind you if it wasn’t for the fact
that you were dreaming.
You’ve pictured him a thousand times
and when he calls, you’re ready.
(He seldom thinks of you and when he does
you’re one of many).

Now I’m not one for armor, and my horse
is prone to shyness…
Yet every thought of you contains the words
“Your Royal Highness.”
Let someone else daydream in vain
for Kings they’ve never seen.

Worms

We went worm-hunting, we did, me and you, we did.
Thing is, when a man is to go fishing, he needs the worms.
And so, my great God, I dug ‘em as though my last three lives
Depended on a damn-good basketfull right now.

I dug, and scraped, and so did you.
Until we found a few, curling and lost. Disoriented worms,

Let Me Kiss Your Tongue

What happened next, I love.
No questions. You did not hesitate.
Someone may have had something to ask.
But, oh. Dearest.
In that certain darkness, my eyelashes playing horizon
Drinking, drank up the spectacle of that glistening muscle
Emerging from your full-wet lips,
On my sentence.
No clarification.

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children's faces looking up

‘Never Again’

These feelings can’t reach the frozen core.
No, chilled and shaken… you turn from the sun
And I cry, and I wonder how one
Lengthy coolness can come from so brief a storm
You never feel warm
anymore.

These feelings don’t end where they begin.
No, spilled and taken… they never flow back
And I die, and I say for the lack
Of a better word ‘Why?’ This one way emotion
Like river to ocean…
‘Never again.’

© Ciprianowords Inc. 2008

Toilet Paper

This morning, elbows on knees
I gazed at a roll of it,
Wondering what the ancients did.
Long ago. Way before toilets even.
And which came first, the toilet
Or the paper?

All we really know is that
Everywhere, ubiquitously,
There is some -- or so we hope.
But it is even beyond hope.

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

Chris Neil celebrates his game-winning goal, Nov.10, 2007.

In Grade 3, Neil’s principal asked him what he was going to be when he grew up. “I’m going to play in the NHL,” said Neil.

Inspired by what Dorothy at Of Books And Bicycles did with her Nov.7th posting, I am going to do a meme-thing involving the letters of my blogname.
Here is the criteria, the rationale, the raison d’etre:

Your Love For Me

If you the hills chant and me in them run
To find naught but tree and shadow
Conspiring, and an owl hooting ridicule,
What will touch my face, then?

Phantasm

I walked across a field last night
And though you were not there…
The scented, memory-laden
Mists of you were in the air.

And these were scattered by a breeze
Whose message was the same…
For distantly were whisp’ring
Aspen leaves that knew your name.

And even when the gathering winds

I Do It Again

The toe pads of my cat are pink as a fairy gown,
And sometimes I tug on the tufts of white hair
That emerge between each, and he looks at me
Thinking thoughts in English, lacking the vocal
Ability of course, but the message could not be
Clearer, Must you do that?
I do it again.
A twitch. Narrowed lids.

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

Can someone, anyone out there, please tell me how it can already be the month of March?
No, seriously, though. In a matter of hours, it will be MARCH!
March?
What the hell happened to February?
Am I going senile? Did I sleep through January or something?
Even with the extra day here, the 29th, I’m sorry, but something seems mightily askew!
Why does it feel like I was just back home not so long ago, for Christmas?
Is this just a classic symptom of old age?
Is the rest of this year going to be just as fleeting?
According to Robert Frost… perhaps…. perhaps it is!

The sun was warm but the wind was chill,


Waiting

Rhymes with weighting, and makes me heavy.
You know I am going to keep believing in you.

The first half-hour I was embarrassed, I guess.
Felt there should be no reason for me, waiting.

I smiled at people, as they passed me by.
And An hour passed, and I put a hand to my chest.

I want to stand with you on a mountain.
I want to bathe with you in the sea.
I want to lay like this forever.
Until the sky falls down over me.
-- Truly, Madly, Deeply – Savage Garden

THE NET

I made you many and many a song,
Yet never one told all you are --
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;

Interviewer: What do you do about writer's block?

I am sitting at Starbucks and just randomly thinking, as I sometimes do.
I am still slogging through a couple of non-fiction books, and just took a break from that to read a bit of the Nick Adams stories by Ernest Hemingway.
Just chillin’ out after a long day at work.
In this lull of a moment, while getting another coffee, three horrendously deep philosophically challenging scenarios have sprung unbidden into my mind, and I pose them to you…

#1.
You are wandering around in a blind fog and you are starving to death. Literally, you could almost die. Then the fog lifts, to reveal the following three equi-distant buildings. To which of these would you mostly likely drag yourself?

a) McDonalds.

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
-- W.S. Merwin –

Absence sometimes makes the heart grow ANGRIER, I say!
I have so missed being able to blog, and to converse with my great blog-friends.
But I think I am back in business now!
The MAC is fixed!

Have a great Thursday!
**********