"floodwater" poems
There’s a menacing chill
on the air
this evening.
“Had I the wherewithal
I’d leave this place,”
I think to myself
as the first warning is issued
by that unfriendly cloud
hanging low and dark
over the mountain.
While once I thought that
the rain would fall with purpose,
I’ve come to understand
that floodwater has no manifesto
except to place the scumline as high as it can.
We can stack these sandbags tall
around our hearts
without regard for what’s on either side of the dam.
They’re only transient monuments to ineffectiveness anyway.
An assassin stands at the corner
wondering if I’ll ever leave my house
and its warmth.
I have news for him, though…
There’s nowhere to go, and
the weatherman thinks we’ll have a storm.
Jan 25, 2017
Jan 25, 2017 at 3:49 PM UTC
(monsoon moments 1)
The lively colors of summer have faded
Blazing May afternoons have ended,
Clear skies are now ash-blue, sometimes blae
Blooming with soggy grayish ***** of cotton,
Ever ready to burst with crystal drops...
Monsoon winds blow.......then rain follows
Big, heavy, noisy raindrops hit the roof,
They pour longer........inundate the streets
Making them impassable.......................but
I'm raring to be out there when it falls,
Let its cold touch, give me goose bumps...
And waken every nerve in me...
Let it wash away the heat and humidity from my body
Let its steady flow, drench my short hair, flat to my skull,
Let it compress my long-running indecision: do I, or do I not?
I'd wait for all these to slide down and join the wet ground
For, I want to walk around....soaking wet, and barefooted,
Feel the grass.......subservient to the downpour
I want to dip and wiggle my toes in the softened soil,
'til floodwater reaches my ankle
'til I'm one with earth and water
And then I...
Would feel unburdened,
When I come in
From the rain...
Sally
Copyright June 9, 2016
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
Jun 8, 2016
Jun 8, 2016 at 9:46 PM UTC
when torn clouds bared blue holes
the river brimmed with ecstasy.
it had rained the whole day
and she was bursting in seams
to tell her side of the story
from the many
upon her shore's mangrove.
how the tiger guards her treasures,
prawns and ***** and honeys and woods,
pounces from the saline thickness of the mist
when dream of life is heavy on the gatherer
and smell of death far gone forgotten
rips the flesh cracks the skull open
flows the blood as silent night
carries the trophy for a bony rest
till devoured by her floodwater.
the river knows it too well
the tiger is her lover and loyal sentinel.
Jun 22, 2015
Jun 22, 2015 at 1:21 PM UTC
we sink half an inch every year
"soon, we'll be up to our ears
in water"
not a creature of fury, just of habit
the moon pulls her to churning, to crashing.
hotter water temper tantrums
rush the brine into our basements
soaking scrapbooks in salt
until it crystallizes faces
and yet i cannot blame the marsh
for reclaiming what was never ours
and taking even what was as penance.
but i refuse to condemn us
for shaping shorelines into lives
because things are so much clearer
when they turn with the tides.
we’ll grow gills in time,
we have to.
the ones who stay on land
could never handle shifting sands
don’t know we cling onto the inlet
with white-knuckled hands.
they never grew from buried roots,
seeds are just flotsam in the sea
so they’ll call Frank O’Toole crazy
when he can’t bring himself to leave.
Mar 25, 2018
Mar 25, 2018 at 10:11 PM UTC
Water flows by,
Quietly polite.
Green under sunlight,
Silver at night.
Is that my monarch's head
Shimmering between wakes?
She looks down and kisses Georgian rooftops.
She dives and twists her celestial face.
But as rain falls my monarch distorts,
And in the first snows she poses for me.
And as we celebrate new solstice a hail of thin ankles bruises the water.
Fish dart from them.
Sharp stones bury themselves so as not to offend.
I remember my feet in there...
All the times comes past here.
All the times yet to come.
I cross a bridge and the town's vein is out of sight.
I breathe the smell of ecclesiastical ceremony
And the cut-grass stench of various friendships nurtured and deflowered.
I mimic footprints that I've pounded into the ground.
The same drunk campaign.
I drink the river and become its flavid run-off.
Water flows by,
Timeless in flight.
Not at the front of my mind,
But in sight
As I recross the bridge.
I'm accustomed to its murky silence.
The distant, sporadic car horns.
Avoided emergencies, obnoxious goodbyes.
I hear them all.
I smell fuel emissions and nocturnal suffering.
I taste staling alcohol and summer's fruits.
I see the town that has cradled me.
I pick at its foliage and try to feel something.
I'll remember praying for floodwater.
I'll remember plains and peaks.
I'll remember the wall that can't hold it all.
The long, loud day
And the long, quiet sleep.
Aug 22, 2016
Aug 22, 2016 at 1:40 PM UTC
I want to feel, like the wind rushing through a canyon bed feels, like I am unbroken.
Yearning for freedom, the kind worth death, as I spill pains and dreams upon the floor.
Where is the garden gate, and will it be locked if ever I come there?
Locked to the stiff necked, sad song liars, the painted ones whose color seeps onyx stain.
Rain saturates the screaming earth, and in the drowning soil, exposes the true roots.
We are woven likewise, we who grip at the core, the ever seeking, same as saplings crying to the sky, with branch of arm stretching and clawing upward.
Then came the roar of floodwater we call Truth sweeping away every hope we had made in the muddy ground full of soft caresses.
When you were a child did you see with wide eyes the world downtown, parading with stainless steel insides and confetti eyes?
Now I long to see once more with wild wonder, to pawn this knowledge and buy back my unknowing days,
to run once more with flushed red cheeks in the deep drifts of the Colorado Winter...
and know nothing of the war...
with eyes of a dream you never fall in...
mirrors to purity..
to see pure. .
Jan 16, 2013
Jan 16, 2013 at 5:05 PM UTC
You are becoming my stride;
my thought between footprints
left burning in the sand.
I have learned to hold you
much closer than my breath
when floodwater insecurities
grab hold and pull me down
down.
You are more than I was seeking.
Your heart won't seem to sit inside you.
You are painting;
always;
rising in me like the morning sun.
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 12:31 AM UTC
saplings
turned kindling
turned ash
all under the winter and fire
of my hands and my mouth
so fearful
of ghosts that
still draw blood
of wounds that
never healed the same
of things broken and left
broken
a self-preserving instinct
i was too in love
to be manipulated
i gave him more
than his years
knew how to hold
and the remainders
came spilling out
like floodwater
brown and thick
as eyes and november breath
it swam through his lungs
his shining, hopeful breath
a new conquest
to the absence
presence inevitably brings
Nov 28, 2015
Nov 28, 2015 at 11:15 PM UTC
Stillness. There is no fire causing havoc in the forest.
There is no floodwater to wash away the dirt it rests upon,
Screaming a song. The birds are mellow.
The squirrels are hiding. My back rests against a maple tree.
Imagination is free, but bound by peaceful things.
My thoughts can wander freely, but the woods are dull.
Can you sing me a song? My plots fall flat.
Falling... though an endless void. There is only black.
This mind is useless if my tales are null.
I already drowned the rabbit hole.
Silence. I already egged the nests,
And boulders keep the bears at rest.
They're sleeping. The woods are sleeping. The trees still standing,
And I'm still humming this same old tune.
Aug 14, 2016
Aug 14, 2016 at 9:37 PM UTC
Today, I’ve felt
a new sort of empty
not the kind I’ve known before,
but something softer,
quieter,
hollow in a different way.
I have the world
just minutes from my reach,
and still
he hasn’t filled this void.
As I write,
the phone begins to melt into my hands
left side lifting,
right side falling,
then reversing
a quiet seesaw of glass and ache.
My dim screen flickers,
and the world fades at the edges.
Tiny black dots bloom
in my peripheral vision
not enough to blind me,
just enough to remind me
I’m slipping.
I ate a small chocolate granola bar today
just that.
I was hungry,
but the hunger vanished beneath tears
tears over him
not understanding
what he’s done wrong
again.
A million times
maybe less,
but it feels like that now.
And maybe it’s stupid.
But I feel ignored
again.
I tried to explain.
I always try.
But he always forgets.
I tell myself: don’t care.
But I do.
God, I do.
It wasn’t even a big deal
but somewhere in the silence,
my self-confidence slipped away.
I deleted every photo of myself.
All of them.
Gone.
I don’t even know why
just that this sadness
poured in like floodwater,
crashing through the walls I’d built
to keep it out.
I’ve been sleeping all day,
avoiding his name,
my family’s voices.
I keep drifting,
even as I write.
I don’t want to do anything anymore.
And I don’t know
what’s wrong with me.
Mar 14, 2025
Mar 14, 2025 at 7:08 PM UTC
The bristles on the boulevard clicked and clopped
splattered into flat rain drops
sped to join bodies with other playmates
now rushing to the rivulet gathering
into a big bang of floodwater
which nobody watched
with physics and formulas.
The pin-striped drops that caused
a rising revolution, spears dangling
for brief seconds in a war cry of splosh-splashes
finally raced to lower ground
to bring down the dam and city
and invade peoples front porches
and backyards
armed with mud and silt
and strawberry colored slime.
The night was camouflaged
with raindrops on the roof
all with the same intention.
Children went to sleep
as parents drank whisky and prayed
for such a thunderous night
of rhythmic staccato symphonies.
Tomorrow the rain would recede
and the fields would be fertilized
down to the roots. Or so they thought.
The flood crept up to their toes
and emptied the refrigerator
of its half-eaten sandwiches. The carpets
soaked up the spilling sauce
and ironically the windows locked
tight to keep out the rain!
As the floods subsided
the newspaper got their headlines:
ONCE IN FORTY YEARS!
it shouted for a dollar and twenty
Everyone read the papers
on how the neighbors got caught.
Cruel ********
always poking into other peoples business.
Two days later the sun returned
to cause a heat wave.
And everyone prayed for rain!.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, a month ago
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 3:45 PM UTC
This
is my
bane, my
dear, lover.
Restless night
syndrome, dark
and pitiless sleep
as the blood rushes
through my ears like
cascades, torrents of
floodwater crushing my
eardrums and deafening
me as I try to dream a
little dream to find
some solace and
comfort in an
old world I
used to
know.
Fall
into a
void of
my own
making, I
clamber up
the stairs to
my dreamland
and dance with
your heart among
stars that refuse to
let their shine diminish,
and I will see you in
that void, the dark
and lonely rooms
that sit between
my happiness
and the love
that you
provide.
I am
yours
and you
are mine and
mine alone and
together we will
conquer all that we
see, every speck of land
in every single dream we
dream, universes dancing
together, minds melded
as one, and even they
who cannot be but
jealous may look
on with those
green eyes,
we will be
strong.
But the
alcohol dims
the effect and I
find myself talking
to the walls as if they
really did have ears, but
we all know they are dead
things, dead as you are in my
head. Someday I might find
the talent to create some
creature as beautiful
as you look in my
dreams, but I am
unable to find
appropriate
words to
describe
you.
Jul 26, 2017
Jul 26, 2017 at 4:02 PM UTC
Each morning
the boundaries recede
Skies are still blue
Wisps of wind still stir
High noon marks an end
and a beginning
Must someone star
in a slow motion film
as a carp stirring
in the remnant floodwater
of a receding river
Feb 7, 2018
Feb 7, 2018 at 2:44 PM UTC
Noah was righteous (though maybe
A bit of a stick in the mud),
So God decided to save him
And his family from the great flood.
Again going over the instructions
After building his ark,
He had a couple of questions
Before they could embark.
“It says here that I need two
Of every living thing.
But I have some misgivings:
That’s going to be hard to swing.
“What’s this about a pl...platypus,
And penguin and k...kangaroo?
And I need to find two skunks.
What am I going to do?
“If I don’t find these animals,
They’ll think my work is a sham.
Ah, I know what I’ll do:
I’ll delegate this job to Ham.
“But first, another question
Is going to be hard to solve,
And that is the problem of food
And what it is going to involve.
“‘All food eaten on Earth’
Has to be on our boat.
With all that food and the animals,
How will we stay afloat?
“There’s another problem:
My lions aren’t nice and sweet,
And they have a strong preference
For gazelle and antelope meat.
“Cramped in so tight a space,
I hope we all don’t smother.
How will I keep the animals
From eating one another?”
He gave his list to Ham
And said, “I’ve found you some work.
I’ve got too much on my mind,
And it’s driving me berserk.”
Then Ham elicited help
From brothers Japheth and Shem.
No one else was available
To help him aside from them.
There were millions of species
Of animals that they had to find!
They’d be in a lot of trouble
If they left any behind.
Noah’s curse on Ham
Didn’t come till much later.
Meanwhile Ham had a few
Questions for his pater.
“Now, about this floodwater—
I'm not disrespecting your wishes—
Will it be salty or fresh?
It makes a difference to fishes.
“And for forty days and nights
We’ll be floating around;
When the waters recede,
Won’t all the plants have drowned?”
Noah said, “Don’t even go there!
There’s no time to stall.
Let’s get a move on before
Raindrops start to fall.”
- by Bob B
Oct 5, 2016
Oct 5, 2016 at 4:15 PM UTC