Opaque, this darker dream-
Curls smoke like in thought
migrating to wispy seems
seeping, accumulating aught
no exit, zero visibility, fog rock
rolling past and whether foul
Ideas escape into this chimeric night
hungover precipice looking out to see
Land **!, out on open main's might
till morning winds from tempest seas
sail our vessel clear, reef and rock
rolling in crested white, jet black waves
scrolls this lemniscus day's clock
feeling shivering cloud bank gray
as bell peal tolls a breaker's pull

-cec

She heard a noise bone deep
low, as a whale hums suspended
in space where direction is absent
sound traveling fast in currents
as her pen across a paper ocean
translates inky fathom denizen
into ears much as Denmark's old king
who wails his fate in nameless horrors
driving her to 'rocks in the pocket mad'
to stand and deliver her requiem prose
and passion for life in watery depths

-cec

Adeline Virginia Woolf (née Stephen; 25 January 1882 – 28 March 1941)

Make this writing live to tell
of feelings deep within this well
of wanting
Draw upon its line tied tight
and fill your draft with light
kiss drawing
Tell of heartfelt tale endears
sweet maiden's ear and hear
belonging
Hold tight to this embrace
cling and know this template face
besotted
"Love sought is good,
but given unsought is better"

-cec

"Twelfth Night" - William Shakespeare

Simply, you are my friend
each cup of coffee and croissant
each lump of sweetness exchanged
distilling down moments of laughter
sadness, and passing silence

When cups are cold your hand is warm
your eyes are always there to see
in whirlpools of questions and conversation
no subject so profound or mundane
that you do not find of interesting hue

There we sit from busy bodies tangle
till sometimes closing night shift
savoring the upside-down time split
of days end and beginning, entangled
in each other's thoughts and chemistry

-cec

This translation machine is broken-
trying to say love and it says hate
put in a phrase of friendship tokens
and it levels one at hell's gate

"New-Speak" and Homeland insecurities
una máquina rota, spells of discontent
What breaks borders other language;
Is it bred of complacent, lazy lengua ?

Languishing in privileged syllables
boiling over rice stew vocabularies
slamming with a hip-go spiritual
trying to make sadza in this crucible

This hairpin empire vomits convolutions
history, her-story, suffer culture's debt
education's deficit mouths a babble revolution
while a classicist argument tattles future threats

Talk a tale of totem's gift in parable or song
spill some beans and climb a stalk up a golden path
Give tongue your peace with liberal speech along
while some may grunt we sing a verdant poem

-cec



sadza - in Shona, Ugali in East Africa, is a cooked cornmeal that is the staple food in Zimbabwe and other parts of southern and eastern Africa. This food is cooked widely in other countries of the region. Sadza in appearance is a thickened porridge.

Don't remember much after kissing that cold brow
it was hard marble and most unlike father's warm skin
his tombstone made of honorable granite soldier's chin
don't remember kissing mother off, though lips did avow

At home tears filled each cracked and crumbled memory
washing years off family ties and turbid sentiments
eventually it ground mother down, to earth-stone treachery
prevented, being buried near to dear, by denominated impediments

Amnesia forms around these roots dissolved in Greek tragedies
padres loose hijos and their fathers lost theirs, immemorial
full of forced forgetfulness and years trudging absently
yet sinew of connective tissue thoughts hold off this cryptic burial

Stored in each molecule of life through generation's seedcase
clings a cocooned incarnation of movement's creation
secret, silent and concealed; ephemeral as a dream-space
"drink sweet waters and be mute" and forgo your ideations

-cec