I thank you, overcast,
Though so many hold you in contempt,
I say to you, dear friend,
Those who are unable to find it within themselves,
To pay you with the respect due,
Shall never find appreciation in our universe.

The glorious sunshine,
The melancholic rain,
The rampaging rage of the vicious storm,
The frost and fear of the seeping, invading ice,
None of them remind me that I am alive as much as you do.

For you remind me that not all is sunshine,
Not all is the chagrin of the rain,
Not all is storm and violence,
Nor is it the freezing embrace of death,
No, the extremities of the seasons, the encompassing grasp of the weather,
None remind me of the trials and tribulations,
The brilliance and horrors,
The humility of life,
The chance,
The pure,
Mathematical,
Plausibility of my own existence.

It is you, overcast,
My dearest and most reliable companion.
It is you they shun,
For they describe you as boring,
Unmotivating,
Dull,
And I say to you,
As I say to them,
The depiction is wrong.

Not everything is in the extremes portrayed by the weather,
Nay, life is full of boredom,
No one experiences life to its fullest,
And those who think otherwise are fooling themselves.

It is you,
The greyness,
The unmoving,
The boredom,
That reminds me I am alive,
And will continue to live for however long I have left.
I promise you this overcast, I will appreciate you, for you keep me breathing.

at the end of the afterlife,
when the dust finally settles,
she climbs into a warm bed
made of soft, wispy clouds,
listening to lilting melodies,
from her childhood memories,
falling into a peaceful slumber.

the sky pulls its downy clouds
eastbound, up to her horizon,
for the spring is cold and
she is resting.

the sky, as cool as ice,
filters through the feathers,
hints of her just beyond
her night-darkened blanket.

the sun dies gently behind the hills as I
wander through the pastel cloud’s apricot-nuance
with floating eyes of vacant iridescence.

and the sky lost all of its mighty blue,
now glimmering in a nonchalantly lilac hue
one could only describe as the universe spilled passion.

darkness manifests on the canvas of atmosphere,
its golden streaks devoured by mischievous glee
and we all sigh and finally close our eyes.

so that this journey remains all that we see.

© fey (08/04/21)

To the window sill that lays out the street,
And gentle raindrops that expand the night
And dust of skin where at the corners creep
And four happy children that play outside:
More nighttime autos that bustle the floor
Under quiet stars below lantern heat:
And waning lamps that dim the houses door
And the sullen clouds that eventual sleep:
With calling mothers for their children young
And teenage men play their music and ride
With grandfathers old and lonely in sleep
And frightened boys that in their bedtime cry.
Then a poet that on his third floor sees
The entire world from his window keep.

I want to stand,
on solid ground,

a canopy covered cloud,
to dream all day-round,

I want to live,
my best life,
and breathe,
like there's only,
today

He’s dead, the *******
Last I saw him up the Bombax tree
Stealing wool out the clouds
Rolling it into ***** and
hanging them by the boughs

I cracked its hollow bones
He helped cut the rest—
Together, I tied them firm
And covered with leaves
covered with dreams
with paints

Houses, and red bushes,
and green birds I made
All, beneath them bruised skies, I placed
I gifted them all to him,
He hung them by the cotton *****
— by the fiery blooms
of that flushed tree
We carved songs out the dirt
Carved for the withered,
and the birds

He’s dead, the *******—
Chopped down the Bombax tree
and buried our flowers
— buried them breathing
My paintings, he nailed to the sky
Pieces of clouds lie bare in the mud
Where he planted a poem
and spilled his soul to
water the seed
that would never sprout

For the dead, we wrote,
—for the winged
They at my colours laugh
and I listen, and I listen, and I laugh
A dreamer that he was,
a dreamer he made of me
He lives there now, the traitor—
plucked the sleep out my nights
One by two by three by ten

Bombax tree, we joked, ******
red out the stilled
now we do not joke, now we’re still—
Red flowers stilled—
He’s dead, the *******
Chopped down our home
Left me with those empty boards
Red, his very own paint
Blue, stollen from the dawn

A thief that he was
a thief he made of me—
I, too, borrow yellow out the daisies
and trick these frogs into spitting green
But what do I paint?
He’s deaf, the *******.
Dumb, even—
What do I paint, huh?
The whole **** world’s
a painting gone wrong
What do I birth out these tired hues?
Last I did, he sold them to the wind
The *******—
beautiful, dead *******
Traitor—