The wind grew chill on a summer’s day
And the clouds built up outside,
‘It looks like a storm is coming our way,’
Said the folk of Ezra’s Pride,
The sea rose up in a mighty swirl
And it swamped their coastal town,
‘I think there’s something wrong with the world,’
Said the blacksmith, Helmut Brown.

He left the forge as the fire went out
Under the tidal surge,
And looked to heaven as folk would shout
‘The sea and the sky have merged.’
For the clouds above were purple and gold
The horizon coloured the same,
The ground beneath had rumbled and groaned
As it came, the pelting rain.

He went to look for his Isabelle
In the cottage down by the shore,
The water there was draining away
Then it hit the eaves once more,
And she clung onto the cottage roof
Where it swept her there in fright,
She cried to Helmut, ‘Just get me down,
I fear for my life tonight.’

So he took her down in his brawny arms
And he waded through the flood,
‘I’ll keep you safe from the world’s alarms,’
As he walked through seas of mud,
He walked her up to the higher ground
As the lightning lit the sky,
‘I’ll not let anything happen to you
For in truth, I’d rather die.’

But then the ground had opened up
In a crevice, ten feet deep,
And he was parted from Isabelle,
Who stood on the side more steep,
‘How can I come on back to you,’
The love of his life had cried,
As he stood still as the crevice grew
So wide, on the other side.

‘The world is trying to tell us things,
It’s tearing us all apart,
Perhaps we haven’t been kind to it,
It’s punishing us, sweetheart.’
And she had moaned, his Isabelle,
Stood out in the pouring rain,
‘Well what have I ever done to it?
The planet is going insane.’

Then the thunder growled up overhead,
As if to refute a lie,
‘It’s you who are insane,’ it said,
‘Get ready to say goodbye.’
And a lava flow came down the hill
In a stream, and glowing red,
‘Don’t let it come near you, Isabelle,
Just a touch, and you’ll be dead.’

We’ll leave them there on that distant hill
Where the world keeps them apart,
‘Why should you be untouched,’ it said,
‘When you folk have broken my heart.
You have drilled through me, and spilled on me,
And have fouled my lakes and seas,
Why should I leave your perfect love
When I’m filled with your disease?’

David Lewis Paget

I call her Chanel -
because she covers up the stench of her rotting morality
with that iconic perfume of beauty,
Her internal ethnicity is of wrinkles, and  rough skin,
and canines hard like diamonds -
ones that tear up the futures of her stargazers
with ****** nips and snippets behind their backs,
Like truths written on paper that she hates to read -
she tears them up into shreds so miniscule
they could never be stitched back together,
Then she smiles as she strides past
with that aroma wafting from her
in agonizing waves like an ocean of failure
pelting her hypnotized admirers from miles away,
Though she’s miamed their images with rumours
and amputated their hopes with lies
she is to them this kind of idol
set up on a pedestal of severed limbs painted gold,
They see a saviour while I see a snake  
cloaked in an aura of No 1

Rain on me
In the cold clear Taranaki air,
waves of rain across the field, pelting down.
Saturating, pouring down my face, glasses fogged.
Every item of clothing on my body drenched and clinging.
The little red ride on mower spumes rooster tails of wet grass skyward
And I exult in the sheer brilliance of wetly getting this huge green swathe mown.

Marshalg
Laughing in the Taranaki rain
22 May 2011

A thousands spires that whirl and dervish,
high upon the scorching currents in the air.
Across the empty desiccated wastelands,
so long parched without waters soft repair.

Like gyrating embodied souls rotating,
to lay scar deeply carved upon the land,
driving clouds of rock like pelting hail,
headlong until all is shattered into sand.

Flashes of lightening and thunders call,
clouds cast in iron, observers of the scene,
testament in muted light from up on high,
sole recall of still waters that once had been.

Desolate open and forsaken landscape,
where only wind gives motion to the world.
Leaden clouds of rain without a falling,
static charged clouds constantly re-curled.

How long ago it was that life had left,
its own scars and marks upon the soil.
until through life's' own achievements,
a once beautiful world was left to broil.

In that not so distant time when remnants
of the miracle that was life is erased and gone.
not one thing that we have ever seen or know,
nor memory of who we once were shall live on.

Two a.m. and it hits me like a freight train -
The realisation that I'm never letting go,
You're too familiar, too engrained in brain,
My highest high and my lowest low.

In every whisper, gasp, and sigh,
You're boiling in my blood,
Far away and yet close by,
My senses drown in your flood.
My avalanche, my hurricane,
my natural disaster,
My shelter from the pelting rain,
Machine-gun pulse racing faster.

A spectre, haunting, never gone,
Your imprint ever by my side,
Knight and bishop to my pawn,
Commandment that a must abide.

And every new experience,
Every wayward thought –
Shadowed by the remembrance –
Fights what can't be fought.
Each new one I compare to yours,
Forever my default script.
A room without windows or doors,
This heartache is my crypt.

You never knew and never will,
Just how deep I buried
The memory I couldn't ****,
In my soul seared and carried.
A keepsake, invisible brand,
Bittersweet reminder
Of doomed castles in the sand,
Love poems in a tear-streaked binder.

The violet sky stood bashful against the dimming horizon. Stark trees sprang from the ground, flourishing in dots midst the blushing stars.

Street lights flicker on, reminding me of how mom didn't have to yell for me to come home, the lights whispered it to me, carried in the caressing breeze.

I'm reminded in the spring, of the day me and my friend ran into the pelting rain and jumped through puddles, soaking our bodies in high pitched laughter and impending colds.

I'm always reminded in the summer months, how everyone including myself, preferred water from the hose over water from the tap. Or how we'd run rampant through the field behind my house, screaming against the heat.

The broken sidewalk reminds me of the time when we all thought we were cool for trying to smoke cigarettes we stole from our parents.

I fell in love with patches of clovers more than that of a boy's selfish smile. I was more in love with the act of collecting lady bugs as pets rather than holding a hand pushed into mud.

I preferred shallow swimming pools over the small voice of a boy asking me if i had other friends like them. Or how the beam of the sun was better than the beam of a slender, pale face with blue eyes.

Blind and innocent children, we fell in love with things we could touch or splash in. We fell in love with the beautiful colors and characters in our favorite Saturday morning cartoons. When we weren't playing cops and robbers, we were lost in a world of SEGA and Super Nintendo 64. We were infatuated with a world that never altered, but our vision cleared of.

We were saturated in a time where our only big worry was making sure we got our recess time. And when the smog cleared we realized our biggest worry was making our parents proud.
And it seems that it should be the other way. We should be proud of the kid our parents raised.
But ultimately, the monsters under our beds became the demons in our heads.
And the kid your parents raised
slowly became the kid you wish your parents never had.

There won't be a day in my life where i wish i could fall in love with the sound of an ice cream truck, or the animals at the end of my bed again.

Blue.
That’s all I can see everywhere I look.
Beautiful dangerous blue.
I feel like I’m suspended in air, light, free, but sinking.
I’m running out of air! I think as my lungs start constricting themselves.
My feet finally touch the black and blue-white tile; my hair comes down around my face, soft, like feathers.
I look up and I can see the lights on the ceiling, and beyond that the fluffy white clouds in the baby blue sky.
I feel so heavy. I don’t think I can make it back up again. I push feebly at the floor, but I don’t get anywhere.
My vision starts to dim, and as I sink limply to my knees, I sigh.
What’s the point of even trying anymore?   I watch the bubbles dance their way back to the surface.
I know I should try again, but I’m just too tired.
Another parade of bubbles escape my parted lips, my drowsy lids slowly close, the thudding heartbeat in my ears lulling me to sleep, and setting the tempo for the tiny  air dancers as they float toward the sky.
In the darkness I feel an immense weight lift from my shoulders, and my eyes fly open.
What’s going on?!
I look to the left and right, everything is still blue. I realize I’m still at the bottom, but I feel weightless.
The pain in my chest is gone and the thumping in my ears. I turn around and look directly into my own face. Understanding hits me like a runaway whale, but I don’t want to believe it’s true. I want to feel sad, yet there’s no emotion trying to overtake me; nothing to fight. I reach out and touch my cold cheek.
Why?  Is the only thing running through my cotton stuffed head. Again I look over my sleeping face, my hand traveling over my features.
I have to be sure.  I gently lift one lid.
The brown eye I look into is dull, empty… lifeless. I expect a train wreck of emotion to come crashing down on me, but I feel nothing.
A flurry of movement above me catches my eye, and I look up to see Mr.Jones jetting down towards me. He reaches my body, quickly wrapping an arm around my stomach.
He kicks off the bottom paddling his way to the surface, my useless arms and legs trailing after him like limp seaweed. I follow him, walking through the smooth blue. Mr.Jones breaks the surface, clenching me to his side as he tows me to the wall.
A waterfall of chlorinated water gushed from my mouth, and I am yanked, like a shard of metal to a magnet, back into my body. I cough and spit, riding my lungs of the foreign substance. Mr.Jones boosts me up on the wall and pats my back until I can breathe again.
My grandmother rushes over and hugs me to her despite the fact that I’m sopping wet. She brushes my hair away from my face and asks if I’m alright.
I do my best to nod, but I don’t think I’m very successful; seeing as I’m shaking so hard. I try to get up, but my legs are like silly string. Gram helps me up and half supports half carries me to the locker rooms.
I stand under the shower in my swimsuit, hot water pelting the top of my head; masking the silent tears that are streaming down my face. Despite the water’s heat, I’m still shivering and my whole body is cold; inside and out.
I get out, towel off, and put on a pair of blue jeans and a plain red shirt. The bright red a comforting change from the cold, clear blue.
I stand in front of the mirror and brush the tangles from my hair, but I won’t look into the mirror. I cant. I’m afraid of what will be staring back at me.
I don’t know how long I stand in front of the mirror trying to make myself look up. It feels like hours. I feel a hand come down on my shoulder and I jump. I look up warily and sigh with relief.
Oh good, it’s just Gram. She says its time to leave and she goes to get my bag. I take a deep breath, cough a few times, and force myself  to face the mirror. Staring back at me is a girl- me yet its not me somehow. Something is different, my hair is the same, my face is the same, but wait!
I lean over the sink, nearly pressing my nose against the glass. Now I see whats so different, what changes everything. I step back from the mirror and stare into the strangely cold, older looking eyes, and think...
*That's me...

Cold rain pelting on my skin,
city lights reflected in the wet black tar of
a road almost too narrow for the cars racing by -
all this I saw last when you were standing by my side,
feeling the nighttime city live and breathe around us
as we watched people scurry by and call for taxis in the cold.
It has never felt lonely to me before, I never saw
how isolated you are in a city when you're standing in its heart,
watching the blood pump through veins around you
and yet not moving, stagnancy amidst torrents.
A neon light flickers across the street from me
and I am ripped out of my dream to realise
you are not with me this time.
I see you in every street lamp;
around every corner I expect to see your face
to face only myself in the mirror of a dark shop window.
My face looks unexpectedly hollow,
my shape unfamiliar without you next to it,
and I wonder when my life became about you.
I do not belong here, into this city where
lights gleam bright even in the darkest hours
and sirens scream agony all night long.
I am from a different world, one where
dogs run free across wide fields and along rivers
and the air smells of fresh-cut grass in spring.
I am from a world where nobody locks their door
and stone-and-wood houses are made to live in,
not concrete boxes where numbers rule lives.  
All this was once foreign to me, and is again;
I do not belong with the neon lights and cinemas,
the glass facades and cold black tar,
I do not belong with the flashing ads and loud sirens,
the people who don't smile as they walk by.
All these things remind me of you.
I was one of them, one of the souls that made up this city
but I cannot live in it when you are not here.
I do not belong here anymore,
among the thousand lights that remind me of your eyes
and the constant noise that sounds like your breath.
All this reminds me too much of you.

I honestly can’t tell anymore
Where it ends and I begin.
The monster inside my blood cells
I fear, is beginning to win.
It has never been a fair war,
It’s been cheating from the start.
Attacking me since birth,
From the very first beat of my infant heart.

It knows when to hit the hardest
And where I’ll crack the most.
It knows just how to make me tumble,
It is the parasite to my weakening host.
I have become so ****** tired
Of trying to smile through the pain.
It’s become like standing in the middle of a storm
And pretending not to feel the pelting rain.

I have lost count of all the battles
It has won and I have lost.
All I know is that it’s a lifelong fight
And it will try to defeat me at any cost.
The only way to **** this beast
Would take me down as well.

like pelting hail
till I had bumps
raised as braille
and he danced all over them
using his finger as a pen

He hit me
like a flying dart
pierced the bullseye
I, his mark
on his first throw
had me from the go

He hit me
like a bombing blizzard
billowing white dust
blinding me with every gust
till I was swimming in the soup
and then he flew the coop

He hit me
like quicksand
putty in his hand
as I moved
he would expand
and held me tight
into his chambers
and let me sink
like we were strangers

I dream of frothing mists,
I dream of stormy seas,
I dream of hills green and tumbling,
I dream of leafy emerald and needled trees,
I dream of crumbling castles,
I dream of the whispering breeze,
I dream of the bleeding sun,
I dream of vivid flowers and tangling vines.
I dream of you and me so many times,
I dream of rain pelting the roof,
I dream of the skies azure,
I dream of beautiful reflections at waters edge,
I dream of the smell of fresh mint leaves,
I dream of dainty glimmering flakes,
I dream of shiming fish scales,
I dream of a rainbow's colour, seven fold,
I dream the most fiery of dreams.

When the earth in Spring
and all the yellows are nearly green
exploding ripe the catkin maple seeds
hung for flitting sparrows

When swift the clouds
dark, with pelting rain
of droplets wet pooling
in the hollows

As the clouds give way to sun
move hurriedly to fill the day with light
there where tiny budding leaves
are greening in the shadows

The two hidden cameras caught it all.

it was midnight, time to close the store.

he slipped two twenty dollar bills in his hip pocket

as he counted out the register...

As he dropped the days receipts into the floor safe,

he was thinking...

he wished he'd never borrowed that forty dollars from mom.

As he stepped out into the cold night he felt the pelting rain hit his

face... he turned to lock the door and felt something cold

and very hard press into his head...

"gimmie your money....now"

I have no money...

"Im not playing...now"

here...it's all I have forty dollars.

"broke *** *****"

He never heard the gunshot, as the bullet deposited the front of his face

onto the store front...

Karma's a *****...I should of paid mom next week...

As the perpetrator turned and stuck the gun back in his pocket,

he thought to himself...finally...I can give dad back that forty dollars I owe him...

To the wind
you were the same at both ends.

There is no core.
Encumbered in a dream, you sleep in tissue:

this thin, skirted apparatus
palming the rucksack of the mind.

When silent is is smooth and oblong;
it must survive winter, the pelting snows.

Speak and the barrel fills
bubbling, fermented.

It is yourself you are drinking.
You have all the names.

Getting off the plane my bags nearly dragging the ground just like my shoulders.  I'm not looking for it.  Cuz "it" was left behind with the one I thought loved me.  Now my only welcome home comes from the pelting rain hitting my face as terminal doors swing open to my reality.  Don't care that I'm soaked to the bone, taxis laugh me by and screaming siren slows its tone with the dying rhythm of precious cargoes heartbeat not unlike my own.

We don’t really understand

How atoms behave;

Or infinity;

Or how winds carry the seasons -

Like ‘Olde April ‘ with it’s 'showers sweet' !

Yes, I’ve felt them...



The clean stinging scent of rain

Scratching at the earth,

Pelting aromatic plants,

Condensing the smells of seas, winds, continents;

Infusing the sum of all these aromas in its perfumery,

Marketing it: April, again.



And Eliot said,

There be April,

'The cruellest month'.

Oh my (!)

Appealing April, with its sunny flavours,

Cascades of cats & dogs,

And dead-eye jack,

Firing frosts that just might spend the tender herb.



It was snowing in April,

And Easter was early, that year

When I took Schrödinger’s cat walking

On a leash, And April was still new,

And capable of shocking...



Now any month - could bring pitiless ruin.

The year annually

Out of step with migratory designs,

Throwing epithets out of its greenstick pram,

Its months in disarray ,

No-one knows what’s going on...





The drunkard earth sups up it’s own tears,

Reeling in its spin,

Until,

Saturated,

It can drink no more,

And every dip fills,

Every meadow spills,

Banks overflowing,

Its resolve drowning,

Questions washing

Up like a tide of interrogative curiosity.



OK – so I am really hiding in my acres...

At least I can tell - it’s April !



Enquiring lily-of-the-valley,

Puts up green periscopes.

Peering through the sodden grass,

The remnants of last year’s soggy leaves,

Cosset primrose & ramsons.

Daffodils are past their best, but soldier on

Like hungover squaddies,

Snowdrops have fat capsules where white drops shone,

Hellebores have been up since the crack of time -

Good movers - they could dance all spring!

Dingles are glinting green with native bluebell leaves,

And their mophead mates have muscled in the garden,

Quiet violets lounge on the field’s chaise long,

Coy, understated,

How British!

Oxlips and cowslips join the brave primroses

Who have been on the razzle for weeks.

White & purple lilac in green cassocks,

Will soon burst out

Like kiss-o-grams.

Boughs hung with clematis,

Still tiny shoots like birds on wires.



I am giving a prize for the first celandine on my patch;

Each little celandine - Rannunculus ficaria - is

A miniature sun uttering: Oi! You up there, old currant bun!

Here’s the template for a perfect summer sky !

Fender Mo Shu?  Fender Mo Shu!
Scraps pelting me from above- this conversation could take 20 to 30 minutes. Do you have that kind of time available?
... and I just met Larry Cherry @ the local carnival stand. His old frame stands at half tilt and his feeble bones creak as he swings the 10lb hammer down to connect up to the chime prize. Ding! zip zap sounds resonate as his eyes wide shut contemplate his success, and then it was over.

Thunderclouds booming like a military drum
Rain is pelting with a solitary hum

Lightning is crackling like the breaking of bones
The sky is attacking rough enough to break stones

The sun was a blood clot, before in the sky
a burning ball of fire that could gouge out your eyes

The grass was scorching, like needles beneath feet
Until the sun set, admitting untimely defeat

And the sky rolled yonder, like an enemy crouched
An ominous shadow till the war cry was announced:

Ear-splitting boom, that rattles in your gut
Louder than a gun, and it stuns, now you run -

But there's nowhere to run
There's nowhere to hide
From the galloping dread, like a torrential tide

Its coming for you, twisted hand of fate
shaped like a lightning bolt, straight out of the gate

The faces that peer, innocently knowing
That the sky-god's wrath was menacingly growing

They're scattered across planes, barren as ice
As the enemy cuts across them, with a single clean slice

Unwavering is fate, that tossed out their doom
And such is life and death,
As sudden
As unpredictable as a thunder's boom.

The Creator looked at the elephant and said:
I made you big so you could be gentle
To the mouse he said: I made you small
so you could walk tall
But over millions of years you two could exchange
places and one become the other.

I know I shoved the lot of you in an Ark
Because Noah was being a pesk asking for rain
when his washing machine ran dry
So I had to fill the oceans to stop that old man
from complaining all the time. Besides I needed the bark
from the trees of the Ark to make me  a small tug boat
to carry some DNA samples of my own, in case,
the lion ate the cow, the tiger chewed on the cat
and the fox tricked the rest with his cunning ways
You see, my friends, there was no grass, or snakes
or bird cages, or trees for the monkeys to swing on.

I thought of many things before I gave the building plans
to Noah and his sons. Only one was a builder the rest
were bums, who never held a hammer or learned how to
tie two bits of trees together, leave alone building
an ark to hold the worlds whole creation.Thankfully
there were no real estate agents pushing the price up
or bankers charging interest. The mafia thought of charging
an entrance fee for each pair, but before they could do that the rains came pelting down and the tickets got washed away in the storm.

So you see the Ark was a joint venture between
The Americans and Chinese and Indians
because they were willing to multiply quicker
than the rest once Mt Sinai rose up to meet the
oak leviathan from underneath.

And so my dear elephants and mouse
and fox and snake and bird and
lion and tiger. Noah and his wonderful Ark
was a script written well ahead so that Russell Crowe could get
a part playing Noah in a computer generated extravaganza
where only the actors and actresses who could afford
to pay a price to be in it - were involved.

The rest of mankind be ******.

Author Notes

Quirky.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

My small boat rocked by the waves
Rain pelting, bruising, soaking my skin
Winds gnashing, sharp teeth show their grin
Taking us to jour lonely graves

I scream aloud sinking down
As I start to think there's no hope
I touch the tip of my rescue rope
Then fishers look at me with a frown

This ain't no fish, his hate in the air
I notice the hook on my salvation
Realizing the miscommunication
He then throws me back in rising despair

Who knows what else is out in this ocean?
So here I am left in cruel darkness
The tempest just adding to my stress

Drown in emotion, lost in commotion
Then hearing a voice say this to shall pass
Afloat, no boat, waiting for this to pass
Feeling each motion, what's in this notion?

Floating through the ocean that is my life.