My sister karen was a manhater
she hated all men
deliriously
she would sit on the top
of the bunkbed she shared with sue
and with one finger curl her hair
then pull it out by the roots
it was quite disturbing
she would spend hours
every saturday doing this
until she had almost no hair left
the family worried for her

During the week when I would
come home from school (I think
I was around 7 or 8) karen (being
older and bigger) would run up to me
kick me in the gut
push me to the floor
jump on top of me
grab me by the ears
and pound my head
on the floor until
my brains fell out
this went on for several weeks
until I told my parents and
they finally put an end to it

One night sue didn't want to get caught
eating an apple in bed
so she put the core in the toilet
and it clogged it
we (all four of us)
were awakened in the middle of the night
and had to line up so my mother
could beat us with a belt
until someone confessed
I was tired so I said okay
I did it
I got a good belting that night
I was suspended from school
for a week because the teacher
complained that the welts on my back
were bleeding so profusely that
lt was interrupting the learning process
of the other children

One day I was coming home from school
and I got caught in a hailstorm
I got pelted really good
Lucky for me Mr. Doty was home for lunch
so I took cover under
his light blue ford f-series pick-up truck
hail as big as golf *****
some the size of baseballs
continued to rain down
I don't know for how long
because I fell asleep

"What were you doing under there?"
he questioned as he was shaking my arm
awakening me
(I quess he thought I was messing around
or something)
I came to and stated
"THE GOLF ***** WERE FALLING
I NEEDED A PLACE TO HIDE"
"oh" he said
"you mean to tell me you were in THAT?"
"yessir" I replied
"well, your schoolday's almost over,
maybe you should go home and rest"
"yessir"
And I went home and rested

When karen turned eighteen
she married a wife beater
for nearly ten years he would
ugly 'er up
finally she couldn't take anymore
and divorced him

But she was only following tradition
my grandpa beat his wife
my father beat his wife
and al beat karen

Yep, those three knew
how to really take a beating

But, not from a hailstorm

I don't know how
To get her home,
Or if she has one...
Does 𝘴𝘩𝘦 even know?

If I reached out my hand,
Would she even pull?

She's been making herself larger.
I can feel her reappearance.
She gets brighter, I get darker.
Interfering with my impulse,
And it happened again...

I forgot how I got here,
Don't where I began.

▪︎ mica light ▪︎

I find
             Myself
      Among common folk
              Amidst the real deal
                            Throwing beers back
                   Gulping shots
                Admitting false guilts
      Believing hateful ideals
   Bad things
                       Happen when not
     In the right mind
                 You can't remember
     What went wrong
Or
                 What went perfectly right
But                   she remains
Beautiful in my memories
           Absolutely breathtaking
              In my
                                 Lucid dreams
          As gorgeous as
                             a Leonid Afremov painting
            Like a hailstorm in august
Unexpected              but
             Gorgeous
Like you
                               My dear

Ripely at 13, quickly an Internet queen
Found a boy around the same age
To swap and talk of things

Mindless banter from pitcher to batter
Such fun to see the words received
Upon the silliness, love was an illness
And the two were a couple on screen

But he became rash and rude and demanding
Forcefully aggressive and to my understanding
Required some photos of her undressed
As to which a little frightened she replied
“I guess”

For a year and a half, enslaved by a monster
No words of love just innocence slaughtered
The last picture she sent was of red bloodied arms
Without clothes on her body
Death from self inflicted harm

We laugh upon this empty rock
We smile as we run our circles
Giggling rats
Lice swaying in unison to our meaningless song
The black ground heaves
with laughter
Let’s go waterski
above the empty sea
You’ll find me snorting and choking and twirling in a hailstorm

I'm a firm believer in the sixth sense of animals and their ability to portend the future 'sometimes' . Many cases exist , farm animals included , of strange occurrences just before an Earthquake , Tornado or Hailstorm !
Animals have the ability to pick up emotional signals from human beings as well ! We had a quarter horse that could pick up fear , a dog that would hide under the bed an hour before a hailstorm , and a pet pig that would squeal and hide from someone it didn't recognize ! Then again I had a Rooster once , that picked up on my depressed state of mind an flogged me good with its razor sharp spurs one afternoon ! I questioned his ability to see the future later on that evening as I rocked on the front porch and picked out his barbecued remains with a wood tooth pick and a cup of hot tea* !

observing the ardent eagerness of the wind
it is clearly understood
that nascent pollens are overflowing
the niche of her heart  

in response to the signals of the river
she keeps on ringing
all long the month of earth-quakes

the bench of the rail-station
wants to hug her

the medicine-counter of the ***-end of the day
beckons her with the hand to come nearer

in the assembly-hall for musical demonstration
adorned with ash-trays
going on the rehearsal of her dancing and singing

she also distributes some life
to the meticulous dressing
of the magnolia

2.
let the swimming pool be fully absorbed  
with its dark-room

when the feather of your fore-finger
becomes green

the merchant of venice
will leave his business of photo-coping machine
to start walking directly
in search of new earnings

evening sets in
on the boiler of the delta

putting on yellow-dress comes
the water-vessel of the paper-balloon

there is no singing bird
shivering with cold
in the fold of the dear bed-sheet  

it is possible that the boldness of the metro-railway
may give some wood of tamarisk
on the expanded palms  

yet oh the western page of night
do tell today
why so much tamed polythene
are here in our cohabitation

3.
after so many days
published in the wind
painted in wings
the recent heart’s desire
of the doors and windows

they have rolled up their fairy-tales
from the ignorant drawing-room that wanted
to set her mind to the hill slanting downward

they did not want to know
how much rheumatism is there
in the hands and legs of the bark
to whom is delegated
the control of the mason-made bus-journey

sleep hugs the eye-lids of the rivers

though there is no postage-stamp
within the reaching-point

then what magic is there
in the hill slanting downward

why the wall does not learn
how to swim like a fish

truly it is he from whom
those negligible moments of man-ism
itch for blue candle-stand

4.
the ***-appeal of the telephone
and the bugle of the carnies-breaking ****-crows
are all harmonised seamlessly

the noon in the blood
is flowing along the river

all the dialogues are covered
with misspelling of men and women

the tailors want to increase life
cutting rightly the walking of clothes

after the vanishing of collyrium
from the eyes
there is not a single being
in the relief-camps

as far as the eyes can travel
i can notice in the ear-lob of the village-boats
the water-colour of fire-flies
twinkles

then let an agreement be signed
with the defence ministry
on the right
to enter into private bathroom

5.
in the air
on which flowers are engraved
the union of the betel leaves are making their outposts
anew

before the calling of the next pine-woods
you all the butterflies do take on board the tram
to go to the south-pole

is it well to incline so much
towards the tv-screen

who can say
the waves of the terracotta
would never make revolution

i’ve sent some full-moons of winter
and some water-bodies
into the holes of the handkerchief

the lacking of the colours
may kindly be excused

the birds that are blind from their birth
has been singing till now
the songs of the cave-civilisation

there is no question any where
this eclipsed-valley is adorned
with the answers only

6.
i am to be blown off on the first bombardment
then it is to be flown
in the crowd of  fire-flies
on the bushes of the scented-lemons

and it is to see the memory race of the grown-up girls

it is to see more
that after the opening of the sluice gates
one by one  
how the gathering in the hindu hotels
increases
by leaps and bounds

the pores of the skin of the body
whose hoods are open
and who are running up
along the spiral route
that leads to the top of the mountain

their child
due to late-marriage
now only knows
how to move on all fours

7.
under the table-glass
i  unfold the life-chronicle of one lakh year

and in the olive-cabinet
all the applications for living

from the monsoon-noon to the winter-afternoon
the lines you draw on the parchment

none of them is so condensed
as to touch the palms of a sailor  

from the numerable timber-joists
come down the swarms of personal white ants

no spring seems to become corporeal
without the spell of misunderstandings  

so of late
besides the dry statistics
with the cough
comes out grey thermometer

prickly-heats spread over the whole body  

the sticks of young antenna
shake off their wings

behind the bath-scene
lies the succulent hailstorm

8.
there is no lovely add
yet the market-value of your headache
is going up day by day

all the noon send her mad
the intellectual kisses
the coos

or is it the running about of the tennis-ball

so much pop-corns are flying out
from the draw-well

or that sound of foot-steps
in the north-east

may be
that is of some brown horses
or some horse-drawn perambulators

when the moon spreads out the platinum
does it judge the recipients

thus the bin-leaves can ring
from head to foot

it unfurls an incorrigible right-angle
in the early-evening

the troop with armours
open a shop of ******
beside the vainglory of the lake

Sometimes at night when I turn over and my hand slides along the small of your back
I can feel the changes beneath your skin.
Sitting next to you, I read you like braille
Like something you need to touch to feel the meaning of.
I know you are a storm beneath your skin.
Sometimes I feel lightning reach out
To the answering chaos in me.
Our suffering makes our togetherness
Electric.
Cataclysmic.
We could crumble mountains.
I don't know if you know your own wildness inside,
Wilderness.
I think inside you are vast and lonely, wonderful but vaguely sad,
The way the trees sound when a breeze sighs its way through them and makes them sway.

Sometimes I feel a coldness from you like a chilly night without a fire
The kind of cold that starlight and silence bring-
Not a hostile chill, like the sharp fingers of frost or ice,
But just a distant kind of... Containment.
A solitude, like the desire to curl into the rocks by the river and become one by touch.
A desire to be still.
It scares me. I don't know how to reach that part of you.

Sometimes I look at you and I see storm clouds and wildfires in your eyes,
I see the end of days, and earthquakes, and brutal hurricanes,
But I see them through glass, as if you've stepped inside a mirror and imprisoned your rambling hurt to keep the world safe-
I see it through the cracks in a briar wall that's sprung up suddenly and sharply, tangled and complex, a warning.
And although I don't want to be
I am warned.

I want to touch
But I am so very good with boundaries
So very
Sensitive.
I feel the changes in the air
The way a deer in the forest may shoot its head up at the scent of a hunter miles away, caught on an errant breeze.
You change what I breathe in and out,
You change my weight and my texture.
Sometimes from you I can close my eyes and feel what warm honey must feel like in essence-
If sunlight found purchase in the air.
I feel fields of wildflowers and slow, dreamy, balmy nights and days at the seashore with diamonds capping the waves.
Sometimes I feel from you the tickle of cut grass, and the smell of fresh rain, and what a butterfly's furry wings would feel like if stroking them wouldn't make them crumble like spun sugar.
Sometimes I feel from you the slow, deep pull that I remember from sitting at the bottom of that coral reef in St Thomas-
The heat of the day sinking in layers through the water to hold me suspended in graceful pressure-
Poised to be swallowed by something much more significant and much hungrier than me.
And sometimes there is simply cold, the way I said,
As if the wind has somehow changed and left me adrift, sails dead, in a sea that offers no sustenence and no explanations.
In those times of stillness I wait, breathless,
Cautious-
They always pass,
So far.

I sit beside you and hold my breath
Hold my hands.
I sit and look at the grass
At the sky
But I see you instead
Silent beside me,
An unknown, a mirror maze
All of a sudden sunlight
And all of a sudden shadows.

When you go dark and silent I want to start digging.
I want to sink to my knees and pull apart the earth,
Find its heart, hot and sticky and molten,
Burning with the secrets of a forever life in the belly of a fragile stone.
I want to claw it out and put your hands on it,
Watch it feed your soul and sear away that terrifying cold.
Light you up so that you will never curl up silent around a black glass starless hailstorm ever again.
I feel the dirt under my fingernails and how
Odd it is
That it is familiar, from scrabbling out of grave after grave,
Confused and reborn and shivering.
How odd that now I am tunneling towards what remade me so many times
To try to break the laws of nature and bring it to you
Before you ever have to sink towards it.

But I feel from you. And then I don't. And then I do.
And it wakes in me an unsettled longing more powerful than my history.

I feel from you the silence right after the last note of a symphony fades
Before the audience applauds
Before anyone has even taken a breath.
I feel that exquisite beauty
And the fear that it will shatter.
(The fear that is the knowledge that it will shatter.)
I feel all of this from you
For you and
I think it might be
Love.

Rain is refreshing in a strange, backward way. It shocks you out of a deep, prolific lapse of participation in reality and reminds you that you’re still here. You’re still corporeal, tangible, you can feel and you can decide. But rain is still rain. It can be cold and unpleasant to be faced with, or it can be warm and welcoming. Beconing you forth to splash and smile in the reality you forgot still applied to you.
    I left behind the idea of full, around the clock consciousness during my last frigid thunderstorm. I realized, during a session already dedicated to realizations, how exhausting it was trying to live my reality to its current extent. How frustrating and soul-crushing it is to have the ambition you truly believed in and planned to embark upon, forgone by the limits of a situation you have no control over. I kept a small jar of ideas and plans in the very back corner of my closet. They were safe, they couldn’t be taken out back and shot nor could they be taunted and destroyed from the inside out. When I was cornered in my intruded closet, when I was taken by the collar and shaken for my truth, they were found. Both above-mentioned circumstances played out shortly but in the opposite order. That’s when it began to rain.
    I decided on an alternative: selective awareness. I keep myself alive only feeling and participating when the rain is tepid and pleasant. When I feel the temperature beginning to drop, I fall back asleep, floating through lull and lash, until the sun comes to change the course of my simulation. For days, all I will see is fog. I’m lost and isolated, but that lack of direction comes with an onset of contentedness. There is no one who can see me wandering through a deluded course I have set for myself. I don’t know where I’m walking, I don’t know what’s in front of me, so the warm rain will give me a pleasant surprise as it melts away the fog and gives me hope for sustainable warmth.
    The cloudiness that lingers in my head, even when I’m experiencing kindness and sensitivity, reminds me that my effort to make my reality more livable is as viable as staying completely shrouded in fog until I wander off the edge of a cliff. Eventually, as I age out of my simulation, I’ll have skin thick enough to withstand the hailstorm I’ll be forced to reckon with. Resilience is necessary, but hope exists. I often forget it does while I’m wondering, but serenity and light remind me that fog isn’t all I’ve devolved into. Rain will come, and so will spring.

It seems that every time
I'm with you,
I feel inspired.
And of course,
with inspiration
comes the utmost desire
to do the one thing
I love greatest;
and that,
is to write.

But how do I write,
when words can't even
begin to describe
the way you play the piano?
Your gentle fingers
stroke each key with such
delicateness
and I want to cry because
your hands could never
cause harm the way
mine do.

How do I write,
when not even the
world's greatest camera
could capture the beauty of
the nighttime sky and
all the other outside wonders
that look so much more
radiant when I'm walking
right next to you?

A poem cannot justify
the fact that I used to
stay indoors when it
poured down rain
because I was scared
of getting wet.
But with you,
I'd walk through
a hailstorm
and that would be
completely fine
with me.

To be honest,
it should scare me
that a girl who
loves words could
be so speechless.
But I am fearless
because being with you
has taught me that
sometimes
I don't need to think
and I don't need to see.
I don't need anything
but my heart,
for every pulsing beat
will tell me what to do.

And now,
as I frantically search
for something to say;
an incredible form
of literature
that would take your
breath away,
I realize that
I don't need to.

Because
how do I write,
when not even
the smartest human
on earth
could explain how
when I'm with you,
my demons turn into
angels?

I need not say more
because sometimes
words just aren't
enough.
So hopefully one day
I can close my mouth,
open my heart,
and show you that
I do indeed
care about you,
too.

I burnt a bridge that didn't have any water under it.
No numbing temperature to shock you.
No tormenting waves to annhilate you.
No angry current to pull you under.
The bridge let across all the danger that I wanted to avoid.
But now that I burnt it down to the ground all that danger
came crashing down into the safe haven
that was protected by my bridge.
I was told to never look down when you feel inferior.
There was grass under that bridge but I was too blind to see it.
I was too busy looking up at the speeding cars crossing this turnpike.
I was suffocated and transfixed by the high beams of my problems.
I was so busy facing my problems head on
That I never bothered to look down and find the strength in giving in.
I didn't realize the bridge was what was directing the negativity away from me.
I listened to them. Society, that is.
And what a stupid idea that was.
Because they told me to burn my bridges.
They told me to strike a match to them
And watch it settle into an unforgiving blaze
Before walking away without looking back.
But they never told me some bridges were meant to save me.
They never said the real danger could be what was beneath the bridge.
They never warned me about the dam underneath that was ready to burst.
Karma is crashing down onto me like baseball-sized hail.
It's not the boomerang effect coming back around to hit me in the face
But instead the avalanche I created from throwing it too far.
And hitting a wall that was too fragile to be played with.
The worst part is I have no bridge to take cover under in a hailstorm anymore.
And no bridge to cross to get away from the incoming avalanche.
All I have are the ashes of what I thought was hurting me.
But it was actually what was saving me.

I'm looking for a hailstorm to run blindfolded through
For the sake of refief
A psychosomatic firing squad to save me
from this six by three square feet of dirt
that you have left me
I now drag behind myself

I have taken this earth
and sculpted it in your likeness
I am Pygmalion praying to the moon for love
but instead I get rain
and as the picture of Her and perfect summers
falls apart like mud through my finger
I clasp and grasp and gasp
and when the rain stops
I am left on my knees in the mud praying with open hands
my skin is baptized so clean my scars shine

Now as the pieces of a heart are returned to us
twisted and unwanted and rearranged like a Rubix cube
by the hands of past lovers
who we knew too fast and promised so much
but didn't care enough
to figure out our combinations
or to hold the secrets contained or the dreams cradled
in this human-sized box
I guess no one thought to tell them
that if you plan to be a past lover
return what you have found just as you have found it
and walk backwards
that the image of you walking away from me may not haunt me in the mornings
and I can make believe you are returning to me at night

but even the stars rearrange themselves
destiny can be rewritten
let what remains of my days be it's pages
in an infinite number of realities I am still happy with you
in an infinite number of realities I am tragic without you
but in this reality I may be happy without you

I'm kicking open my wardrobe and cleaning it out of all the shadows
I'm putting on a new jacket, a new hat
but I'm keeping my old shoes
for I will not forsake the path
all the roads that once only led to you now lead from you
thank you for the detour

I'm looking for new hands to run through forests with
new arms in which to build a home in
a girl to jump on bed sheets with
and a shoe box in an attic to bury you in

For this heart will grow and one day I will see
through an unbroken stained-glass window
you were just another piece of me

It’s a funnel cake November
Not quite an Indian summer
But somehow this sweet air could
Turn into a hailstorm
And the church bells ring
Right as darkness falls
Usually by now them bells are gone
Here comes the killing frost

flaming
lightening and thunder
storming
sickeningly twisting and turning
hailstorm, hurricane in my heart
in my gut
burning
cooling down with the rain, dripping
slowly calming the flames
tears and rain, rain and tears
smoke then steam
sulfur, metal, steam
red, sulfur, flames
fire
in my soul, in my mind
red-hot, heat
purple, black, blue
ache
rain and tears, tears and rain
slowly calming the flames
waves
crashing, then receding
crashing, receding
slowly receding, drifting
away
drifting away

trailing like meteors
ash flicks of embers
that tumble through darkness
and no one remembers
dissolving in liquid
like powdery pigment
that forms and then fades
in less than an instant
its all spreading out
like scatter star skies
each as the other
in dark and disguise


molecular symphonies
energized masses
that circle each other
like sublimised gasses
a hailstorm of being
a meteor shower
reactive conversions
of matter and power
its all spreading out
like scatter star skies
each as the other
in dark and disguise

Every hard thing that happens to a soft heart
leaves a callus
Every mean thing a heart hears leaves a ringing echo
Every stone that's thrown leaves shattered pieces
Every beating leaves a bruise
Every hailstorm it endures leaves dents
Every wreck leaves a place in need of a fix
Every tear leaves a place to sew a new stitch
Every lie it's told leaves it with a doubt
Every scream leaves it a little more deaf
Every bite leaves it starving
(for kindness)
Every tear drop makes it sink a little deeper
Every drought leaves an unquenchable thirst
Every time a heart is left starving it turns into a glutton
(for punishment)
Every heart that gets cut is left with a deeper scar than before
Every time a heart is pierced by a dagger
it puts on a little more armor
When a heart is left to bleed it
learns to apply pressure
A heart that gets shot learns to become a gangster
Every stab slices, stings, and burns
Every hit leaves a gaping hole too big to ever fill
Every time a tender heart trusts a lie
It becomes timid and learns to fly
(away)
Whenever a sweet heart gets tainted
it becomes bitter
(sour even)
When a hopeful heart's dreams don't come true
it becomes jaded
When a loving heart witnesses hate
It becomes scared with terror
When a heart gets broken it
learns to heal
But becomes misunderstood
When a heart gets cornered it rolls over
or lashes out in defense
When a heart has been used it
stops being so giving
When a heart becomes wounded
It decides to lay down or stay in the fight
When a heart is shackled and tortured
it cries out in pain
When a heart is abandoned
it becomes self sufficient as it stands in the rain
A lonely heart becomes depressed
and learns to self medicate
When a heart becomes an addict
it learns to deal
When a heart is ravaged it
looses its passion
And when love is  lost within a  heart
It becomes just another body part
(that can't be fixed)

© Ashley Rodden. All rights reserved

I can’t get the sand out of my shoes
It’s been weeks
And I’ve been hitting them
And shaking them
And knocking them around
But still
I can feel the grit with every step
So I still can’t get the beach
Or you
Off my skin

With you, there was no warning
I went from drifting languidly along in the sunshine
To being tossed against the rocks in a sudden hailstorm
Shocked and battered and lost
Disoriented in the downpour
When I’d had the promise of clear skies

I’m not sure I’ll trust the weatherman again
He’s got your eyes and voice and disarming smile

I’ve been trying to get the salt out of my ponytail
I’ve been trying to get the feel of rock out of my hands
I’ve been trying to get this ****** sand
Out of my shoes
But it’s so sticky
Everything
Is so sticky
And here I am in the biggest mess
With hair and skin and mouth
So full of you
That I don’t know how to escape
My tongue is still recoiling
From the half-truths you spilled
Tinged with sweat and cinnamon
And slime
And here I am still choking on them
Retching
Just to get rid of the taste
Gnawing at my lips
Just to break the skin that knows you
Scrubbing myself raw
Just to keep you from clinging

My ears are buzzing with your nonsense
And I am running from the noise
Bolting with everything that I have
As sand grinds against my feet
And I will be ****** and breathless before I stop
Because I need the distraction
As much as the distance
I can’t keep reliving your kisses
With every stubborn grain
I can’t keep wondering if you’re lying
Every time I turn my back
I can’t keep playing this game
Because we’ve all already lost
So I will not apologize for taking the high road out of here
And leaving you to sulk with your I-didn’t-mean-to’s
And your too-little-too-late revelations
There were a lot of ways this could have ended
But I never once imagined you would have brought storms to my doorstep
I never expected to be trying determinedly to peel my skin off
And I never thought I’d be sitting here wishing to forget your name

Bloomed from a Rainy past.

We’re 8 years apart.
Born in entirely different centuries
Born in different seasons and on different days.
Yet we’re exactly alike.
Yet so contradictory

Our hair, our face, our expressions.
Our jobs, our mannerisms, our perspectives.

You don’t see what you’ve done to me Kristoph.

You’ve planted this seed in my head. That I should always listen to you, that what you said was true and gospel.

You nourished that seed in my head while raining down on me like a hailstorm.

You had my strings in your hands. Cherry picking what I thought and what I should know.

You make sure that seed was planted deep inside of me.

But I broke free of your storms.

I became my own flower.

So when I bloomed it wasn’t what you wanted. You tried to prune me. So I built a fence to protect myself.

You gave me the seed but I became my own garden. I flourished while you wilted. Your visions became stationary.

That’s when I realized it.

You aren’t a flower at all.

You’re a ****.

And when you can’t infect one garden you move on.

So you took him.

Now it’s my job to free him of your thorns as well.

And together the two of us will


Bloom.

I watch him slowly deteriorate.
The first man I ever loved
Is being brought down,
Like a torrid helicopter
Caught in a hailstorm.
How much he must struggle
Against the current,
Only to be swept into unsightly circumstances,
Into a misfortunate gravity
He brings upon himself.
Homelessness, his vice,
And all I can do to help him
Is not worry so much
About all his suffering and whirlwind adventures
That make so little sense.
The delusions, the psychosis,
The wretched, wonderful mania,
It’s all so much for one person to contain,
And all I can do is watch
Him deteriorate
Before my eyes.
The first man I ever loved,
Fearful of none,
How terrible must be the parts of him
I cannot see
For his actions to be
So extreme.

My words don’t appear like my mind visualizes,

A speech-impaired philanthropist swings inside,

Tonight, the hailstorm rides the waves,

I am not on the same page, inside.



My thoughts wander on that plane,

An unforgotten tune lingering in the rain,

Leaving this mere mortal on this plane,

How I wish I can leave this pain.



I need the cover of the Carpathian mountains,

And beyond in the realm of darkness,

Ambient sounds and the tragedy of dropping rain,

I need to leave this page, struggling madness.



Before I leave, I need to confess,

That what the heart had desired for long,

To be on a journey, with my obsessed,

I wish you were on the same page, forever after

What may come, with fire or water,

The Earth can swallow me tonight,

I perish with all that remains, written on this page.

A list of the world at large:

Too many road signs pointing to places to inhabited
Faces that contort when one mentions life
A thousand sprinkles atop rotted cupcakes
Contradictions that don't strike right
A crowd rioting in the form of heart
A crowd talking in the shape of a human heart
Raspberry heartbreak with regret on the side
A worn old man marrying a worn young woman
Two people walking in opposite directions
Two lovers facing opposite walls as they sleep
Action that lays dead, shot, ****** in the middle of the street
Terror running amok in the minds of America's young
Paths dirtied with fibs shows there world there really is
No place to run or go or hide from the chaos
A capital F when one stubs their toe, whispering "****"
Alphabet soup with no Z
Apricot ice cream **** in golfball sized hailstorm
Remembrances of moments that are nothing but images
Retyping letters to people that may already be dead
Writing out loud while whistling in my head
Cats that purr long and rough and tumble onto my sheets
Whisper meats that mean nothing after it is over
An obsession with a mystery that holds no name
White clear plastic that burns when you put it to flame
Wondering what the date will be
When there is no more game
In play

I can feel winter coming.
It’s more than the wind that scrapes me every time I’m forced to go outside, it’s more than the ice in the air every time I breath, spiraling away from me like smoke.
It’s the ice that’s settling into the pit of my stomach, the pit of my soul.
I can feel myself freezing.
I don’t remember warmth, I live in the dark. I’ve got nothing and no one to keep me from this hailstorm
It’s the ice in my mind, every morning taking longer and longer to thaw, no matter how many pills I feed it
It’s the ice in my bones, freezing me in place. Movement isn’t impossible, it’s painful, and the cracks are starting to show through

I know what I do in winter.
I cry in winter, in the morning when I realize I’m awake and in the night when I realize I’m alone
I don’t walk in winter, I shuffle and I dig myself deeper into the ground with every footstep
I think too much in winter, I think myself in circles around the room and sometimes 6 feet below the ground, no longer pacing
heart no longer beating or burning

I know who I am in winter
I am a shadow in winter, the absence of light
I am a girl, just a girl, and hardly old enough to die, but apparently old enough to barely live
I am a fool in winter, who looks for warmth and finds a fire, enjoying the burns because she’s missed the sensation of feeling
I am alone in winter, because no one hears this story, and no one knows how far into the ground I fall

I hope to survive in winter, because that’s the most I can ask for

I’m split for time
So, offhand, here, I tip tap a rhyme
Dissecting and resembling
This Frankenstein text
Suffering, the ice of distance
Flagging the pole of our love
You’ve got a pull, no effort—enough!
Cursing the hailstorm that rains from above
And don’t get me started
See, I’m hardly smarting
Ice’s no price when you’re on thrice rejected
Yes, that’s no success
****, I’ve been there twice X neglected
—I’d guess you’d call that my best

So I turn from the possible
Down fantasy lane
Looking in the mirror at phantom me
Knocking on reflections, does it even have a name?
The ghost of the past made present with past pains
I swear these stains won’t come out
No matter how the tissue tears
No matter the boxes emptied out
Costco’s gonna need another round…

I shout into the silent replication
My reflected repetition
Distended, this pretender’s a sinner
Me? See, I’m a saint
And there’s no role for mercy
Hell, I’ll be thirsty when I’m thirty
And a little birdy told me you’re sturdy
So say hello to your pen-protector perfect nerd
Let’s curve the interrogation
Move on to you and I
Because honestly
I’ll lose if we get too far past “Hi.”

First: a soft statement
tolled out to a vacant page
ringing, and rebounding at the edges
as a quiet ripple set
to subtly amplify the light
of imagination.
The stone was dropped by --
what?
A hand that is as old as, or is older
than God.
It pushes through the water like a fish
without fins, it invisibly reshelves
the fluid memories from below
to above, below
to above until at last the rock,
the stone that is a soft statement at the top
of a once-vacant page,
clacks into place on the darker underside.

And then the poetry continues:
Crumpled Lightning;
A hailstorm of Words; Visions; Lines: Sparks;
all angled to mirror the space occupied by you,
even as it speaks of something else entirely,
even plummeting from every direction
to the point they blur - left to right, top to bottom -
the poem is a sheet of water,
a prism of distorted imagination showing you there,
you, clear as day, sharp as life
something, some piece of a thing, is made so clear
to you, a facet of life, a law of reality, or the inner clockwork
of a mind; you see just that much more of yourself
and that space you occupy in air, it is
that, though it may be masked by its magnitude, or its detail,
that is the quality what has wrapped your mind in a net.

So then the poetry concludes
with what?
Some three pillared, immovable declaration?
One scarcely held breath in the wind?
A clot of sky? A vein of iron?
You never fully expect it, no matter how often you are told.
Somehow, very likely inexplicably,
you recall some quality about beginnings,
drawing your eye to the top of the page
that started it all. The
First: a soft statement
an echo freshly familiar, despite
its elder weight; it was there all along
an echo, but an anchor of a stone
built for tethering all that poetry
to the underside of your mind.