If luck knocks on your louvered door you will have a chance to fight your enemy. You will stand up like a crackerjack prize and pay no mind to the man that broke your backbone.

Into the windowless courtroom you will trek. People lined up on hand carved benches, staring with unaroused expressions, waiting warily for their names to be called.

You feel your breath halfheartedly fill your emaciated lungs with foul and cumbersome air as you survey the miserable scene and avoid locking eyes with the man that was disguised as your one true love.

You wear a band of rubber which you snap on your wrist at the first sign of weakness so you stay focused on the gavel’s exclamation.

He tells your long-lost spouse from another life with another wife that this is not Watergate and “I don’t recall” will not suffice in his civil courtroom.

His honor dishonors his woven white robe when he yells in your direction with agape red mouth and judgmental judicial tone. When the courage strikes your hand-stitched smile will widen with words and you will command an audience of perjurers who will point forceful fingers at their prior partners that used to be ******* lovers and now sit dead pan wantonly waiting to bleat themselves dry.

Slam the gavel while the corn cracks in the microwave bag until all the edges have been popped out and fairness has been forced through the funnel like liquid butter with a diet coke to wash it down.

You walk away, down the dark labyrinth of hallowed halls snapping your gum and tip-tapping your heels as you flee from the referee who does not understand your half eaten heart with the wiggly worm within its wind-up walls. He will pronounce your fate with a backhanded expletive and a muffled “adjourned.”

Only partial sunlight
but that's by design

just enough illumination
for us to see

yet
keep our focus inward

but if we could
would we dare

throw a brick
or a stone

at the frosted glass
louvered slats

and make them
shatter

and if we could leave
where would we go

and would we be equipped
to handle

the scenery the splash
of color

or might it cause
a sensory overload

Whit Howland © 2020

The evening stars were gone, replaced
by a spreading, ominous purple bruise of cloud.
When the wind rose, in sudden violent
crisscrossing gusts, everything went into motion.

White cabanas shook, like staked swans
flapping to fly, lavender bushes thrashed
their thorny arms as if in panic, umbrella pines
creaked and writhed like tethered balloons.

Lightning lit the winding, stony stairs, like ornamental
neon lights, as we’d run up the path from the beach.
Shockwaves of thunder accompanied the flashes
- there was no lag - the storm was there and upon us.

We were laughing and screaming, like children
chased through a dark Halloween funhouse.
The first, fat drops of rain popped behind us,
like a giant’s, arrhythmic, snapping fingers.

As we reached the open, French, louvered doors,
that led from our suite down to the shoreline,
we body-slammed them against the tempest.

And braced them fully closed with our backs, as if to vilify the
natural courses of wind and rain with an animal will to break in.

The lashing monsoon heralded our urgent, stormy union.
We were like the storm - insistent, wild and untamed.
All was revealed in that flashing, tempestuous darkness
as need, euphoria and lightning lit the naked night
.
.
A song for this:
Walk Between Raindrops by Donald Fagen
Hurricane Waters by Citizen Cope

A full moon shines though
a louvered window

as I eat ice cream
over the sink

while thinking about
the many times

I've been burned when someone
has told me

IT

tastes like chicken
fried or otherwise

whit howland © 2021

Better yet
why

am I here

rays

of sunlight

refract

through
the frosted glass

of

a louvered window

Whit Howland © 2020