Behold the mighty cloud
That floats above the rest, and is proud
Of it. His fluffiness no teddy bear
Can match. Snow is jealous beyond compare
Of his whiteness, and the fact that he
Can make rain, hail, or snow be.
The trees themselves cower and shake
When he yells thunderously, and quake
When his rage electrifies the night.
He can fly low, create fog, and banish sight
Or soar in the sky with the wind, his friends,
Who help him move faster than a car tends
To go. His awesomeness no other can show.

I – Rain Over the Dying Empire
The Weather Forecast looks grim today
This mess won’t clear up any time soon
So button up your jackets and turn up your collars
And mark up your calendars for a time of grey skies
There’s a storm on the way
We’ll all be blown away
The reign will never end
Until we’re washed clean off the map
But don’t you worry darling viewers
Just find yourselves a shelter, you’ll be fine
Don’t go scrambling in the smog to find hope: it’s always there
It pains me to be the bringer of bad news
Oh! Dearest Public I always pride myself in saying Tomorrow will be a brighter day
But oh! My friends I also promised I would never lie to you
We have serious weather warnings on the way
They will ravage your livelihoods but don’t let them take your souls
We stand strong against the tide of the oncoming gale, the hail and the thunder
If they weather away each tiny bit of all you hold dear
Raise your fist to the angry sky and scream for what is right
I promise, one day, sunshine will be legal again
I’ve tried to make you laugh and I’ve tried to make you cry
But it’s difficult when describing the movements of cold air across the land
If you ignore the hot stuff blowing out of parliament these days
It’s possible to force a smile: a fraction of happiness for hollow promises
They know nothing of how to save the world, they just want to escape
They’re harvesting the strong so they can find another home
Sure, they bejewel their guillotine as it hangs above your throat
Because they think that you’re impressionable but my advice is let them think so
Because Nature wants out of the pact she made when God abandoned us here
And they just want revenge because she’s stronger than they’ll ever be
The Mother they used to love, that they cast down, has come to kiss them with her poison passion
She won’t ask for their forgiveness as she beats them down, begging for hers
I’ll leave you with my darkest secret since you probably won’t see me again
As they surround me I want to let you know it’s been incredible
Striding through the desert carrying you upon my shoulders
And so I’ll thank you and blow a goodnight kiss to you
If there’s anyone they’ve left alive
They have finally come for me
Goodbye

II – The Broken Figurehead Speaks
We interrupt this broadcast with a message from the high command
Good evening noble people, please ignore what you have just heard
And keep on working for our greater good
For as we all know, it is better than theirs
Regrettably, my tolerance is thin for behaviour like that of our darling Weather Reporter
And my mercy is negligible for those who stand against us…

III – Martyrdom for Sunshine
As I stand above the ocean, with the army at my back, looking out at this sunset
It feels like the first time I have seen such beauty
Though waves gallop into the cliff below there is a malleable peace
It penetrates to the deepest corner of my heart
As they load their guns and prepare to fire, I think of the others who they have killed
And how privileged I am to have the sun as the last thing I see
If God will have me I’ll happily join his angels now
I look down the crippled rock face to the water, miles below
What have I got to lose?
I’m going to learn to fly…

"a canvas, which reflects
sunlight in rays unseen
before submitting itself to a life of color"

Razelle McCarrick
--------------------------------------------------
From memory she painted me,
Tho we had never met.
She painted my biography
On an easel of paper, brushes of pencil,
Exposed, bereft, inexorably delighted
At being dissolved in words that were not mine.

My annotated notes herein ascribed
To her revelations of my secreted stories,
Were written as I gazed upon the multi-blues of
California's beaches, neckline decorated with
Strands of white pearled beaches
Opposite contusions, bruises of
Orange terra cotta roofs, a burnt coral,
Colors that demanded attention, preservation,
Salutations, all hail the penetrating gaze of
Razelle, betrayer and savior.

His moniker was a borrowed line,
Still crazy after all these years,
How could this unknown girl of twenty two
Clear capture, undress me in the poetry of her canvas,
The instant and constant self-examination,
The rapture when transcending the fears
Instilled from birth of how I ought to be,
Which sixty two years on, the wrestling never ends.

Color me flesh nude,
Color me blue bottled,
Red ripped asunder,
The sweetness ascribed to my love poetry,
A subtraction of the bitterness of a failed life.
Colorist of my seams, my woven words,
I am white now, my canvas completed,
Waiting another poet to write over it,
And chaining new words to what was writ.

N.M.L.

-------------------------------------------------------

Razelle McCarrick · Sep 21, 2010
Biography of a Man
Someone wrote a biography of a man. Said he liked to write poetry and spend time in nature. But there are many things its readers will never know about. The streams of thought, the analysis, confusion, the Sadness, sprinkles of joy, the Transcension. A strange man he was..sweetly strange, but strangely bitter. At odds with the halves of himself..or perhaps thirds. But who will know? Someone wrote a biography of a man, but didn't say he was crazy. Or that he had a sharp mathematical mind and tried to add up the components of life to find it wasn't an equation in the first place. It was omitted that he was not merely a man, but of some other kind, often missing his home and his people, though he didn't know who they were. They didn't say when he became deaf, that he still played his favorite songs because he could feel them all the same and see them in colors. And no one knew that he refused to write in pen, but pencil only because one day his work would be rubbed away by the sands of time, just like his body. Someone wrote a biography of a man, but there was no account of what he did on a beautiful day, like the time he sat by a stream pondering his life and rewrote the biography of a man.

There Is But One Law
(The Dancer's Coda)


There is but one set of laws,
One that need be obeyed,
One that brooks no heresy,
One that gives no absolution.
One that needs no priests, no canons,
One that that refuses disobedience.

We all bend knee at altar invisible,
Though feasance never requested.

The Laws of Physics.

A body at rest, a body in motion.
Laws immutable, unconditional,
Equations, proofs, demonstrable,
Inequalities inexcusable, banished.

Dancer says:
I am heretic, even these laws I refuse.
My body denies limitations,
My mind believes I will make do
What it could not, but yesterday.

Defiance from wire to wire is the
Fuel in my veins, fear but a detail,
Leaping from from ten meters more,
My Declaration of Independence.

My body plastic, my mind ethereal,
Some mock, call it trickery,
Some hail, call me hero.

There are forces greater than mine,
Forces irrevocable, mathematically superior.
Each day my force grows as well,
Visions imagined supersede the
Tedium of definitions, of boundary lines.

Bend the law, conquer the null, fill the void.

Each day sketch, devise, organize a
New rebellion, follow only one command,
Honor but a single battle cry.

Leap, then fall!

That dancer, your only law,
That heretic, thine only coda.
Action is freedom.

For you are dancer,
Whisper as you leap:
The Fifth Freedom I possess,
The Freedom to Fall.

May 17th, 2013

I sit here singing along to Tim Mcgraw
as the hail tries to crack my window open
between thunderclaps
I need you
I need you
Whoever you are
I need you

I am dead,
but do not weep for me.

Save your false tears and shallow platitudes for these:

the dispossessed that walk your streets
homeless and lost
hands held out for some morsel of change
or maybe just a kindly word
or a glance of recognition.

Save your false tears and shallow platitudes for these:

emaciated waifs
clinging to the tattered robes
of their mother
flies buzzing round the fetid sores
that pock their melancholy faces

Save your false tears and shallow platitudes for these:

pathetic souls that huddle
in the rubble of their homes
scratching at the ruins in vain hope
of finding those lost in the onslaught of
Nature's wrath

Save your false tears and shallow platitudes for these:

the lost children
who will search in vain
for those nurturing hands
and soothing words
gone in a hail of lead
scattered in a blast of revenge
to splatter the faces of these innocent ones

Save your false tears and shallow platitudes for these:

your regrets
your mistakes
your knowledge
that you stood by and allowed
these assaults on humanity to continue
day upon day
life upon life

I am dead
so will you be
and ask yourself now
who will weep for you?

Not these.

Inhale or exhale,
I feel the sting of the working veil.
Frail, and stale,
Like the artifact that used to be my tale.
It's raining hail,
and still as loud as hell.
I fell,
With or without you,
I know what is true.
All of the words that flow to you,
Even the ones that don't,
Won't fall on deaf ears.
For fears and intense tears.
A range of emotion for all of my peers.
But created by you and maintained by smears,
Of reality...
There is not enough sunlight for alligators to live.

Spare me your friendship
Spare me your alliance
I'm as sure of your hardship
As I'm sure I'm not dying
So wont you find a way
To make it right tonight
Won't you find a way
To fight the hurt inside

It's not the broken heart
That finds the comfort it should
It's not the fallen hard
That finds the heart to make it good
So don't you know what to do?
Cause if you do make your move

It's not the hilltop that beckons to the pilgrims below
Nor the wild skies that falter when the hail hardens to fall
It's not your cherished bud you used to know
Only a sweetened rose you provoked
To thorn you so

So tell me again of that very last straw
The one that brought the camel to his knees
That very last straw
Where you couldn't see the forest for them trees
That very last straw
That held all your sorrows and your crooked pleas
That took all your unspoken apologies
And got them lost in a balmy breeze
That very last straw
So overwhelming in the heat
Now so small and lonely
You wouldn't even see
That very last straw
Was it you or was it me?