"stormcloud" poems
It's not simple
It's rusted nails breaking skin
Lightning flashes in a hurricane
The crack of a body hitting the pavement
It's the pinch of nails in your palms
The tremble of your legs when you think they're watching
The ache in your chest when your binding is too tight
But not tight enough
It's not a stormcloud, it's a typhoon
It's not a discomfort, it's torment
Its the steel beams in your chest snapping under pressure
Your skeleton crumbling so maybe your chest will be flat then
But all those rusted nails and steel beams
Heated by the fire and fury of passion
Remold into something new
Someone who can stand a bit straighter
Speak louder
Tip their chin up
And show the world who they are
Who he is.
Dysphoria is a skyscraper crumbling to ash
But it's also scraps of wreckage
Reminded into a safe haven
A place of rest
A place of comfort
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 9:21 PM UTC
Transformation.
To be transformed.
Seed to flower.
Child to adult.
Caterpillar to butterfly.
A wave can turn to a hurricane,
a flame to a wildfire,
a stormcloud to a tornado.
It looms,
it darkens the sky,
it frightens.
But does not the shore dry,
the forest fizzle out?
The sun sneaks out behind a seemingly never-ending stream
of darkness and devastation.
So, too, do we transform.
A boy became a man,
but not before
he was absorbed
by darkness.
Only thereafter
could he seek out the sun.
Peace comes after war,
recovery after illness,
healing after injury...
This transformation,
it is greater,
more magnanimous
because, too,
that process,
that search,
journey,
his darkness...
it stretched on for what he presumed was his
eternity.
He was scared.
He was alone.
And then,
he triumphed;
he needed no one.
And then,
out flew a newly
transformed
him.
Out to the world,
new world,
brighter world,
out he came...
a butterfly.
Apr 19, 2014
Apr 19, 2014 at 7:51 PM UTC
A broken clock is right twice a day, but there is no time
at which a broken windshield is useful. In my peripheral
vision, the cracks could be lightning, but Minneapolis
is not as interested in drama as I am. Somewhere, not here,
it is raining. It would be great if it would rain on me
because then there would be a reason I felt like garbage
right now. There's always of course, a reason, but it would be
nice to say It's raining in my head rather than
I have a chemical inbalance in my brain or *I just remembered
that someone I love will die before I do.* All of downtown
is underneath the sky. If you spend
long enough in one place you will eventually be hit
by lightning. Because it's not real lightning
we're discussing here, stay longer and you will
be hit twice. Never move, ever. You might go somewhere
there us no lightning. It might not rain there at all.
Apr 27, 2017
Apr 27, 2017 at 5:23 PM UTC
what’s your favorite kind of flower?
mine’s a forget-me-not,
a fear settled deep in my chest
that remembering me might
not be for the best,
a knot in my stomach formed
from your stormcloud eyes
like summer skies.
like forget-me-nots.
loyalty and long-lasting
and pleading to remember me, forgetting.
december makes me forget sunny weather.
i think i’m kind of
in love with the sound of your voice,
and your smile,
which is dangerous because smiles
are always going to be the
worst kind of weakness.
i hope they don’t forget me.
i hope you don’t forget me.
i’ll send you bouquets of words i never said
of texts i never sent:
yellow acacias and yellow tulips and blue forget-me-nots
(secret and hopeless and true loves);
angelica and amethyst and flowering almond
(inspiration and admiration and hope);
red columbine because you
leave me anxious, trembling;
white camellia japonica because
your loveliness
is perfected.
send me red carnations
(yes and yes and yes)
with unwritten handwritten answers
(yes and yes and yes).
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 11:43 PM UTC
i listened to an old song today, and it took me back
to breathless august nights
wondering if i'd ever get to kiss you again
or if that one earth-shifting moment was all i'd get
and i'll never forget that.
someday i'll tell you what that song made me feel.
my stormcloud eyes will meet your summer sky eyes
and you'll know how much i loved you.
Aug 18, 2015
Aug 18, 2015 at 2:49 AM UTC
thunder is your favorite sound
and thunder is what cracked
in our stormcloud lungs
and our pulses
and the brushing of fingers
like lightning rods,
hoping one too many
would be enough to strike us.
petrichor is my favorite smell
and so we're suited to the dark grey
when it looms o'erhead;
every rippling echo an invitation
to be the next rock thrown into the sky --
rain breaks the seal, and immediately
there's no other option than
to be intoxicated with the scent of renewal.
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 2:21 PM UTC
you spoke with your back turned
like nothing was wrong
the kettle sat screaming
its blistering song
your eyes crack with thunder
I don’t look away.
I taste every stormcloud
and swallow the rain
you asked if I loved you
then smirked at the floor
i said it too slowly,
you moved for the door
We fought in the hallway,
your knuckles went red.
You hit without blinking
and meant what you said.
you find every fracture
then press where it stings
You say, “it’s devotion,”
and tighten your strings.
You lean in, now limping,
your voice raw and rough.
We cling like survivors
who'd suffered enough.
Your hands then remember
what you never confessed,
you kiss where you hurt me
and ask for the rest.
but still, when you’re shaking,
and all fury’s gone,
I gather your pieces
and whisper a song
I stitched up the silence
you gave me to keep
and rocked us together
til sorrow found sleep
We curled in the ash
what didn’t survive,
and found even ruin
leaves something alive.
Jun 2, 2025
Jun 2, 2025 at 12:26 AM UTC
Timeless rain, come carelessly, come
scour the furrows in the land.
You are most cathartic for the sky
and drop from fumbling hands.
Drumroll, drumroll - smiling, insist
yourself in grass and wood and fences
marked as Private. You are young snow
but with ambition. A stormcloud’s
in my head and you should know that
the world is drenched and wailing.
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 6:42 PM UTC
Tomorrow is a shattered mirror,
blinking at me, showing the sun's teeth,
as though fending off starving stray cats.
There was no sun today,
I worked while it slept below
its sheets made of the empty fields
that lie east of my home.
Dereliction, undiluted, joins ranks with the
birds who have forgotten winter is coming.
Blotches of paint on stormcloud canvas,
like Jackson ******* began painting the October sky
and gave up after three or four flails of his
glorified, dripping brush.
Although there is a reflection here,
it is a dream now. The details have been
misplaced, and we can only recall major
landmarks and plot twists.
The surface, however, looks the same
as it always has,
and will go on doing so,
through the death of tomorrow, and her child.
Oct 14, 2012
Oct 14, 2012 at 1:22 AM UTC
Numb
As I mumble a quiet,
"Hello."
My eyes drift away
My mind too
That day
The beating figure
My chest holds
No heart here
This ****** mess
Could never be a heart
Not again.
Broken
The Hate
Slides down my cheeks
At the corner of my eye
Like a stormcloud
My tears rain
The swell when I swallow
I cough
I hack
I need a reason
The reason
You're there and I'm here
So far away.
Oct 11, 2011
Oct 11, 2011 at 10:18 AM UTC
From the moment of my exsistence
gravity bound me to low lands. Holding me firmly
under a sun with no mercy
to the thirsty earth.
I prayed to my Beloved for rain
From the miracle of our encounter
Love swept me above the drought Our bodies
collidng, tasting like thunder
ecstasy drenching the parched dirt
I pray to my Beloved to rain
Feb 15, 2013
Feb 15, 2013 at 8:01 AM UTC
Your morning breath drips as honeysuckle into tea –
I drink it, refreshing. There are days
where I can nearly see the heart in your chest like a Valentine’s Day
card and you are not just flesh and bones when we touch.
You are full the same way my scalp is a street of
gold streaks. Our love was once not more
than a **** planted in a coffee can, now there are roses
whose thorns lead a trail back to the day we first met under umbrellas
and dewdrops slightly sweeter than rain. I catch all humidity
as if I were a cloud – stormcloud, suncloud, so rich
with your every season I could boil it in kettles and make steam.
Jun 17, 2013
Jun 17, 2013 at 3:08 PM UTC
It weighs heavy on you
Even when you've never spoken before
And when they pass through the distance
Like a radiowave, or a stormcloud
And to see how many rivers snake to their final shake
That drips off like morning dew in the middle of the night
Would I be missed that much?
Jan 21, 2012
Jan 21, 2012 at 4:35 PM UTC
sugar i
am carried on lofty currents,
days like this. days
evaporating, caught in
tumult. hands, caught between
bricks. banks of
simmering stormcloud.
outside, in the throes of
daisy-speckled fields, i
am found with the taste
of your syllables tucked
just behind the lip. thought
convolving, shifting dot,
position, tangent; no simple
question. just combination:
these speckles i know, the
silhouette of
your face in
each blink. the
warmth of this soft hum, when
i sing, to the world, of your
radiant heart.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 7:50 AM UTC
old man with stormcloud hair
eyes indistinguishable from
an unseasonable sky
and I wonder
if perhaps he's blind.
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 3:41 AM UTC
Don't say that, don't
say that, not anymore, I can't
think when you say
those words, they choke when
I inhale you saying
those formerly craved syllables they
block my throat when I try
to say them back, say I-
no, I cannot I
will not I refuse to hurt
myself again for you, haven't
I hurt enough even
as I sit here and my panic
hovers like a cloud on the
edge of my mind this
stormcloud will soon soak
and flood everything in drops
of liquid terror will leak
from my eyes don't
say you miss me.
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 2:35 AM UTC
lightning, bright as the sun
etched on eye, and mind
shaking with the thunder
rendered, deaf and blind
clouds, passing on
to the beat of striking shards
and ears, listening fond
as the storm's bright music starts
the darkness always passes
it's always been this way
storms and gales revealing
a newer, brighter day
so sitting on my roof
I sigh and blink, in time
I will no longer be aloof
because in a stormcloud, there is rhyme.
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 11:44 AM UTC
I forget where I forgot you...
That place is a ghost land,
it's a dreamscape,
it's a netherworld,
where Styx was our path
and death was our guide
for into life we emerged
absent of one another.
When I remember that I don't remember you,
there is a gentle flutter of the heart
or the buoyancy of a smile uplifting the balloons of my cheeks
even the pull of earthly forces
a magnetism that I'm sure slams us into walls
across time and space
when we can't escape the force.
I'm forced to regret my shame.
My heart splits apart where glue,
like melting-hot pizza cheese,
can't protect the seams and my memory is suddenly
seamless.
There you are.
Cradled in a vignette.
It's snowing, and I've fallen over.
My friend cackles next to our Quasimodo snowman.
You fear that I am a basket of eggs
sliding toward the precipice
time counts down
you fade
I smile,
and tomorrow
your haunting is a stormcloud
the past comes raining down upon me...
"Good morning folks, it's 97.8FML; look's like we've got repressed memories. Visibility is low. There's a sharp depression chill sweeping over. The tears won't let up; about 70litres today. Better have good wipers, it's looking like a long weekend. And now, we have a word from our sponsors. Kleenex."
The memory surfaced the same way you found me.
Out of the blue, like an angel: of death or of life, I don't know.
Sleeping is harder than catching butterflies.
When I count the sheep, they have your face.
When I think about you, it's a circus.
It's a mixture of laughter and staring into a wall; the occasionally thrown chair at an invisible lion and the whiplash of my dreadful anger.
It doesn't make sense. I last knew you in the time it takes to grow a forest. And here I am. In a thicket of bedlam.
I used to forget that I'd forgotten you.
Now, I can't remember you're not worth the memory.
Dec 10, 2016
Dec 10, 2016 at 2:46 AM UTC