It came from cloudless blue
No herald of its fall
Was served as heaven’s brew
To quench the thirst of all
To give to morn its dew
And cause to tiller’s prance
To wet dry ground anew
With peace, joy, song, and dance

A peace of spotless white
Urged warring halves to join
As weary eyes did sight
The gleam of nature’s coin

A joy of love’s consent
Burned bright from empty core
As ailing nose did scent
The rise of petrichor

A song to woe's distaste
From voice of grateful praise
As thirsting tongue did taste
The ale of favour's daze

A dance of festive tier
On soles of arid sores
As shutting ears did hear
The tune of Angels' scores

A comfort so surreal
Set last of five to race
As numbing nerves did feel
The warmth of wet embrace

It came from cloudless blue
As touch of God’s good hand
To bid fierce drought adieu
With child for barren land
Who looks not to years past
But thanks the Lord laid bare
Having found at long last
The one for whom to care

For the days when your ego slaps itself as if it’s playing hambone,
remember: there’s a name for the smell of rain on pavement.

And every photograph is like Stockholm Syndrome,
where subjects fall in love with their captors.
You are no victim. That’s why I still don’t know whether you’re photogenic.
All I ask is that you keep photographing my self-portraits,
so that I may love you through the way I view myself.

Because my ego is more like that potato clock from the science fair:
surprisingly electric, yet full of holes. My skin is pierced with nails,
but I am no Christ. It’s just my job to keep time.

That’s why first place goes to the skateboarding rat.
The judges don’t like me because I don’t believe in gimmicks.
But when you look at me--alligator clips and all--
your eyes become blue ribbons, letting me know
that I have won and you intend to claim your prize.

“Let’s take a photo,” I say.
You say no, that taking pictures will make us like everyone else.
I ask why it matters if we know we’re not.
You look down at the newspaper. In my mind, I say your name.
And when you look up from the politics section,
I snap a photo for good measure.

This plan seems completely doable until I realize
I’ve never called you by your name.
You call me by mine, and attach it to sayings like
“No one will ever bring half a smile to my face like you do”
or “Hi” or  “How are you?” or “I love you.”

Is this because there’s only me or because
there’ve been others besides me?

If I were to succeed in capturing you,
I imagine you’d have red eyes in the photo.
Red ribbons to let me know I’ll never top second place,
that there are other girls you’ve been inside of,
but you are my only. No contest.

And yet you ask if I’ve awarded any other blue ribbons.
You don’t believe me when I say, “No.”

I know you asked as a way to boost your ego,
but for the days when your ego slaps itself as if it’s playing hambone,
remember: there’s a name for the smell of rain on pavement,

and that your wish to feel special should never be at my expense.

Droplets tap the dusty windows
Tipping pleasure on the pane
Dribbles every time the wind blows
Prophesize a hurricane

Kisses linger on the backseat
Desperate to delight in more
Suffocated by the heat, but
When it rains, it starts to pour

Panic storm that quickly closes
Smashing waves upon the sand
Tension tearing up the roses
Stuttered poems, shaking hands

Though the pressure keeps you floating
And the ocean licks its shore
There's no way of sugarcoating
Once it rains, it has to pour

Stick a finger in your ceiling
Let the plants hang onto youth
Sunday jazz, petrichor feeling
Hear it tripping on the roof
Smell it shifting all around you
Leaking through your drying veins
Leave your stagnant dragonfly blue
Open up into the rain

When it rains, it pours
I'll blossom being yours

Downpour cleans the ***** traffic
Rippling madly down the drain
Paints the artist something graphic
While he's waiting for the train

Laughter echoes in the morning
Licking soil and clouds to raw
From the vision that's been dawning
Once you rain, it has to pour

Spitting bombshells pelt your raincoat
Tears in quiet pools of green
Holes inside your getaway boat
Water's sweet but can be mean

You've avoided all the warfare
But the stars rampage for more
Douse the thin comfort you still wear
Once it rains, it starts to pour

Stick a finger in your ceiling
Give the plants a thirsty truth
Fairy lights and freedom feeling
Tunes of our torrential youth
Smell it changing all around you
Bursting through the shrivelled veins
Leave your crippled summertime hue
Open up into the rain

When it rains, it pours,
I'll bloom so much being yours
We're a perfect storm, I guess
Fire has been stopped with less

When it rains it has to pour.

I pray you may each day
Rise easy from your bed
With no cares for yesterday
Nor the day ahead
That you may live this moment now
Not those unknown or past instead
Unravel your own thoughts
Expel the demons in your head
For your beauty shines within you
If it could just stay at the fore
Instead of dampened, your throat full
Of a constant petrichor

For half a revolution she spends her days
in caliginous caverns
where worms like silver thread
weave through moistened walls.
Water, endless dripping,
howling, whining, stalagmite fangs.

It began with a stranger,
shrouded with shadows.
Petrichor breath,
and beetle black eyes,
twisted root fingers,
and scattered seeds.

It was lonely at first,
death and loss and
weary wayfarers with tired souls.
An estranged husband,
a trio of rumbling growls,
and the lonesome echo of her own footsteps.

Waiting for a someday,
that will never come,
her titles, a mantra,
repeat in her head;
daughter, lover, mother and wife,
stealer of souls and giver of life.

So when the daffodils bud,
and the world awakens,
when she blinks through sunshine
and steps into the light,
she holds her head high.
She is Queen of the Underworld,
bolder than before,
she will evade their pity,
and transcend them all.

will i steam like
naked earth beneath
the tepid rain
raw?

There was once a drought that thundered through the land
It stormed from north to south sparing neither head nor hand
It came on the heels of may, to rob fields of their right
Giving hunger to day then taking respite from night

Sun came and moon thereafter, time and time again
Yet the skies yielded no answer to the outcry of men
‘Cause fortune did reject the farmer’s desperate plea
For sin of thankless neglect towards soil of sower’s glee

Clouds massed in mocking grey, winds whispered hopeful lies
Telling of a better day when we would hear the heavens’ cries
Such was the willful drought that ended harvest’s reign
Starving land of fruitful sprout till Mercy brought the rain

I should say no more of the gloom through days of old
But with words long withheld, tell of that which should be told.

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
   —The Serenity Prayer

I. Heron

I was born arrow-straight, built for flying,
Three skipping stones past Otter Creek, hollow
Bones blanketed by slate gray, blue stones slight
And callused by well-worn prayers and shallow
Swells of minnows — subterranean aches —
And water cold on yellow scales, hardened
By the calamity of sunsets, lakes —
The drowning weight of too many pardons.
Dip low, tend this broken shoreline sweetly,
Spread shadowed wings and break honeyed silence.
Forgiveness take flight at dusk, discreetly
Written in psalms. Tepid soul find balance
Between the calm, a resting river space
This old trembling mind cannot displace.

II. Quetzal

After the storm, the chaos and quiet
Meet like dew poised on timid fingertips
And shallow grasses to quell the riot
Stirring inside. Fix fragments of this ship
Made of broken parts. My soul’s petrichor:
Inhale failure with a benediction
That fills tired lungs with bravery, before
Nature proposed expectations — fiction
Taut and mended by truth. The earth exhales
In breaths refreshed by rain, accompanied
By loudening trills and harmonious tales —
The tremor of circumstance, and the need
To continue existence like the weeds
That grow in sidewalks despite human greed.

III. The Pelican and the Gull

American Magicicadas choose
To surface seventeen years after birth
For the purpose of recreation. The Blue
Pelican cannot quietly unearth
The patterns of the tide without the gull,
But she does so with tireless trials
And the moon at her back — the lunar pull
Shaping stray shells for a little while.
Twenty-one years of tawny solitude
Shattered by innate desires, buried
Deep by stubborn aches, and kindly allude
To breathing for the first time. Weight carried
And lifted by rekindled hope, reaching
Sands like a button shell kissing the beach.

IV. Kingfisher

I pondered self-acceptance before diving
Into seas uncharted, with the patience
Of Tibetan monks softly harvesting
Grains of sand on an abandoned shore. Since
Emptiness is impermanence, we change
Like shifting seas suspended in nature,
Born from the crease of God’s hand — rearranged
Flaws bound by circumstance. Come close. Nurture
This silent heart into awakening.
Beyond these gray waters surges the sun,
Hopeful in the wake of a newfound spring,
Ochre and alizarin. We become —
Aware that no one saves us but ourselves,
With self-worth rising in tremendous swells.

I'll stand here, on the edge of time waiting for the world to pass me by
soak in the sun, with every last breath
then disappear when the smell of rain starts to water the earth

When the soil rises into my soul, blanketing my heart with it's earthy embrace
I'll soak in the water drops, the ones that dance on my finger tips
and watch the clouds start to grey

I'll let you colour me, with your rain
I'll let you cover me with your pain
I'll let you envelope me in your everlasting sent
oh petrichor, I'll even let you take my breath

The sigh of things gone,
echoes of hope and the
small prickles of a blackberry
as I turn it on my tongue
between knives of teeth.
I reach further into the bracken,
The tangle of thorns caressing, hooking themselves into my clothes,  
These are familiar pains,
Small scrapes of memory.
Petrichor, a reminder of our last walk
The clouds, tremendous waves breaking across the sky, coming storm
The plucked magnolia blossom wilting in my hand
How bitter it tasted on our tongues
I saw the berries, then, crimson unripe jewels
Vowed a Persephone return when they had turned onyx
And came back alone while you languished
In your underworld.

I can find sweetness amid the pain,
What have you found
To sustain  yourself ?

To be imbued with the conviction that empathic listening is a panacea,
by the surreptitious, murmurous harbinger and his mellifluous words,
provoked brooding that my comprehension of his susurrous eloquence was a mondegreen,
when this scintilla of sagacity left a fetching ingenue crestfallen.

By the surreptitious, murmurous harbinger and his mellifluous words!
I adopted a propinquity to this furtive, ephemeral epiphany,
but when this scintilla of sagacity left a fetching ingenue crestfallen,
I discerned this lagniappe beleaguered our dalliance.

I adopted a propinquity to this furtive, ephemeral epiphany.
When she became inured to petrichor I knew my method pyrrhic,
and when I discerned that this lagniappe beleaguered our dalliance,
I vowed to rectify the imbroglio for my quintessential cynosure.

When she became inured to petrichor I knew my method pyrrhic,
and I ruminated that her insouciance was only forbearance.
I vowed to rectify my quintessential cynosure of the imbroglio,
and fabricated a denouement to return her to halcyon incipient.

I ruminated that her insouciance was only forbearance,
until hearing her state our conflation made each a moiety of our own panoply.
She fabricated a denouement to return us to the incipience of halcyon
with ineffable felicity, and I remembered with ebullience my inamorata's words.

Hearing her state our conflation made each a moiety of our own panoply
provoked brooding that my comprehension of her susurrous eloquence was a mondegreen.
With ineffable felicity I found ebullience in my inamorata's words
and was imbued with the conviction that empathic listening is a panacea.

She once told me
she was terribly afraid of
the 889 blades of grass
in the park down her street,
of the 889 worn books
in her local library
of the 889 gum-covered steps
to her bus stops
of the 889 looks
she must make over her shoulder
of the 1 778 pairs of greedy eyes
stealing looks away from me.

I missed her when she sent me pictures
because I couldn't bear to look
at empty frames of empty eyes
(red dows no match red
unless it is the scarlet of blood on broken glass
after a year and two months of tranparency)
and also because the things that slipped into my phone
could only remind me of moments that could never be
and dreams
that would never come true.

I don't know what to say to her
without breaking her
(like the broken glass)
(the image still hasn't left my head)
but she inspires me toward metaphors
and the adromeda galaxy
isn't so far away anymore.

How can I stay by her side
when she triggers me to want to fall
but how can I ignore her call
when she is the only person I feel safe with
to coincide

I am afraid to tell her
(or myself)
how I feel
because in a cliche
I don't know how I feel myeslf
but dear, together, we are formidable
and apart --
I don't know about you,
but I catch myself on the dry spells --
we are fort minable

this song has been stuck in my hear
since it reminded me of you
and this could be another metaphor for something heartfelt
and not altogether original

But I want us to be
the figures in the painting
you said you saw us in
I want to be
that feminist duet
(even if I can't sing and you voice is that of the devil's)
I want to be
the cats in the picture
with the intertwined tails
or the flowers tangled up
on a vine
(I was going to send you that on
but I thought against it
because you were too beautiful to be compared
to a simple petrichor-scented bougainvillea)

So I will be
the 889 poetry books
you dog-ear and highlight
and secretly slightly plagiarize
and I will be
the 889 plants growing
in your backyard,
sparkling for you like replacement diamonds
after the rain
(and better yet I will be the forest
of 889 trees
looming not frighteningly but protectively
over you)
and I will be
the 889 strides
of golden brick road
to follow to your favorite coffee shop every day
and I will be
the 889 innocent peaks
at a delicate pinkie finger or a nose
(because a delicate rose such as you
cannot be seen all at once and truly appreciated)
and I will even be
the 1 778 pairs of eyes
stealing my own looks,
and hopefully you will not be afraid anymore.

I will split myself
into
6 228 parts
to make you feel comfortable
and if this is not a love poem
then it is an apology
and gratitude
and anger/resentment/not really/how could I resent you/you are everything

what I'm trying to say is,
we could go so many different ways,
and what's one more expression of love to you
after all you've been through.

In these poisoned days,
Arms to hold, smiles, love, comfort,
More than I could ask.

I love petrichor ;
The way that seconds after the first few
drops start falling ;
The scent of Ozone fills the air .

I love the smell of fall,
The beauty of trees showing us that you can still shed bits of you that have died... Yet still be beautiful.

I love the sound of my nieces laugh;
The way it steadily always brings me back
to earth durning chaos ,
Reminding me to be joyful.

I love the ocean.
How beautiful is it from the surface ;
Knowing no one will ever see all the beauty
That lurks beneath the depths.

I love seeing peoples faces describing
The person they love.
Their features change , they
Become alive .

I love coffee, and my dog, and my tiny feet, and whiskey, and sportscenter, and lime popsicles. I love sleeping in ,and watching Braveheart .  I love love, and i love living .

What do you love.

Time to smother, time to love her
time to hate and create another time to smother.

I was told upon my Mother's knees that days like these were few and far between, but I have seen the sloping of the shadows bearing arms.

Time to **** your brother baby, time to **** another maybe time to **** some time and more.

I'm sick and tired of being wired to the bomb,
press the detonator
save some time,
I'll see you later when the dust has settled and
the noise has died away.

Black asphalt

Damp bicycle tires

Sparkling trees

The whole of the street scene is blurry and softened

As though covered in a layer of oil paint

The barefoot laughing, no-longer-dry-mouthed children are dancing in backyards

Kicking up mud and dirt with reckless abandon

We dream of moments like these

So soft they live on in memories  

Like down feathers on strong wide wings

Sweet-smelling, heather-scented moments

These moments of gentle, dawn-colored rain

Can you feel how your withered heart opens up?

It's ready to heal

let's not make this mercy killing into a tragedy
if you mourn, i'll recover my grip on reality
realize what i've done
and i can't handle that responsibility

i accepted my fate the first time i lost my mind
knew i'd forever be stuck outside my head
fought for a few years more,
but now i'm done with this

i will fall like the primaveral rain,
soak the earth with my brittle rotting bones
let the flesh decompose
ease my mind, cleanse my soul

tangled up in vacillation
mania-white staining indigo perceptions
the future never seemed so trivial
(who said i couldn't live like this)
wide-eyed, selectively hypersensitive
i'm ignoring what lies ahead
i don't want to think about it

i'm destroying what little chance i had left
precipitation replacing perspiration,
erasing perspective,
drowning out my voice of reason
just let me breathe
cause i'm so sick of responsibility

this is just the cycle of life
perspective's leeching the necrosis
from my bones
i will be reborn as a lesser being
so for now just let me
pretend that the flames are home.

There's petrichor in your coat
a moonglade for your gaze
I'll listen to psitherism
as I sense you pull away.

In the divet between mountains
Resides a wooden cabin – ostensibly an amalgamation of the scape
Adroitly - I - quondam female warrior flit
Down massive (ancient) hand-laid, hand-cut carved stone steps
Bounding from contingent step onto the dense pad of turned soil
Tacit compliance between gravity and soil holds footprints bound
A compressed deflating crescendo as pace ignites with bounds

Cadences of protuberant wildflowers and grasses erupt from swollen terra
A winsome chromatic menagerie, dispersed in ecstatic fistfuls
A venerably ancient ritual

My nascent clandestine vocation
Personally meted out - a beatification for my provisional sanctuary

Along glacier-fed stream
Lissome fingers shadow inert stalks –plucking dormant beginnings from their desiccated ligaments

I am austere and unadorned save for a festoon of pyrite flecks trailing my semblance
Residual gilding from my ante-meridian swim taken after requisite gathering of wild blackberries, goose berries, and rhubarb along oft-tamped path

The sun, nestling into its requisite apex endorsed my completion
I reclined into the hassock of soil, feeling the elements settle about with an embossment of my form
Imposing verdure arched subtly as compressed soil beckoned hyperbolic flux

As I lay within the basilica of opulent living columns replete with comestible bounty
Lingering dew honed inflections of sacrosanct petrichor in unison with piquant clover
Wild purple clover buds saccharinely tinted and inundated nestled nerves in mine cribriform plate

Birds pitched and galloped through the frond tips and beyond in the lapis expanse
Frequently snatching damselfly’s and assemblages of midges from their ephemeral drift

Auspicious rays transcended stippled diaphanous gravid clouds
Light inundated ether entered humbly into the cathedral oculus
Pyrite speckled terrain beneath, and my bare gilded form above
Cast a refracted aura about my sanctuary

Precipitously the elusive vaporous embankment distended further
Ashen atmospheric correspondence inaugurated liquescent sustenance to my mountain abode

And I -
Lingered beneath the descending gobbets, curls furled in a puddle
Fresh topsoil cupping my corporal topographic contours
Pressing blackberries into my mouth between smiles

Drenched in the tears of distant clouds
comes calling a name, echoing
in the dunes of the heart;

There is nothing in a name...

Announcing of itself to a seeker
knelt on a hilltop,
burning in a bush,
of an essence beyond names;
Beyond the before and after;

... but the word, is something else.

Long the season of withering,
but deep in the night,
a fear grips the heart racing
to the rhythm of the dew
dripping down the tile;

it's all cracked just a bit
the fractures are splitting open
at first slowly
but now they're coming apart
as fast as an earthquake
gushing out from my walled up heart
into the open.

it's all burst and here i am
waiting for the waterfall to end,
for the day when only
the smell of the rain will remain.

- petrichor

as usual,
your name will flood my thoughts,
until all that is left of my once sane mind
are little pools of you -
puddles of your existence.
raindrops on the fogged up window that is the cloudy reality of my brain.

scraping my belly until it is raw
along the ground in a slow crawl

(road rash)

gravel, close, I smell the rain on the asphalt, crawling,
the grey and brown--pull--skin (away and away) now
it's embedded in my skin, while membranes grow off

brown splinters

sliding under layers and layers of thin skin
visible, when they puncture and break out

repiercing

Where is my redemption for my (in)action?
Why must I be such a sadist to all?

the dank soil tightened
scent of relief after rain
sunset burned like sighs
in time the gray sky turns blue
so do the streaks in their eyes

What I can’t imagine is what it would be like to be with you alone
for just, say, one night?

and in holding your hand and taking a kiss from those talk filled lips (what would it be like)?

And just for a second you exist like the petrichor perfume that turns to window mist after a while of summer rain.

But beneath your dripping wet hair I lie still and stare up
to you and wonder why I can’t be there

So I wait in the square and write your name and say something like
I hope to see you again.

grey skies roll
clouded tropical
undercurrents
of future falls
shrouding skies
and shifting seas
from sad-eyed lowlands
to mountain highs
and we as trees
shiver branches
ever extending
shootings in the breeze
at arm’s reach
we never touch
planted
too far apart
and as such
falling droplets
slip through fingers
and shatter the ground
an endless coming down
our roots soaked through
spent
and craving more
all around
aroused from slumber
the petrichor grows
slowly floating up
and filling the air

Rainy day
It sounds like blossom flowers
Remind grace for me
A perfect time to write you a poetry
Accompanied by rainfall and petrichor
With hot chocolate on my desk
And you in my pages

everything got quiet
but not in that creepy sort of way
more in respectful anticipation

the world was alive.