"thunderhead" poems
Black, Swiss cheese hulk on horizon
The James Longstreet
immobile old freighter of the bay
Towed to the ignominy
of its last commission
in the curled arm of The Cape
Tides flex their muscles against it
But The Longstreet is steadfast
in its dark purpose
Standing target for practice
A sortie if planes home in on its bulk
Honing their skills
on this “fish-in-a-barrel”
Thunderhead-etched pyrotechnics
Booming follows the miles over water
Against The Longstreet’s silhouette enduring
even God fixes sights
firing bolts across its bow
taking aim at our futures
Standing targets for practice
Vietnam? Cape Cod?
No difference to teens
before life’s ocean of conscription
Sand is cold beneath dunes
Beach grass rustles
to the pulsing surf
to the wind’s whispers
just below hearing
as if there’s a secret
that must be kept
We are targets for practice
We are meaningless din
Pulling our sweatshirts and blanket closer
The Supremes sing thinly
from transistor
“Stopped for a moment in the name of love—
Thinking it over”
Mar 3, 2017
Mar 3, 2017 at 2:14 PM UTC
ravishing moon taps
my fluttering eggshell heart
the splattering yolk
flat sliver of moon
sliding across paradise
slicing the treetops
the lunatic moon
sails forth without his trousers
blushing sky tonight
unforeseen moon
these blooming heavens ablaze
the refugee sky
let me be consoled
up in the thunderhead sky
by a silky moon
wild moonlit river
carp riot underwater
a squadron of snakes
Sep 17, 2012
Sep 17, 2012 at 4:10 PM UTC
You have always found a way
to inflate yourself,
a thunderhead of you
a rainer upon parades
keeping your own side dry.
Praise your portolio,
record yourself accomplishing that,
but wait, there’s more of you
the lost boy
dressed as a hero.
The prison of ego comes first,
then the crippling psychic wounds
and the inevitable chaos
that just ****** you off
because there is just too much to manage
and you cannot do it alone
but you don’t dare tell anyone
so you fake it
and you don’t make it
and one day
while you are too busy
refusing to be grateful
for the awesome mystery of your own chi
a tagger defaces your BMW
in the parking lot of Whole Foods
and you weep into your tofu.
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 7:28 AM UTC
Above, above, the sky is a painting
A renaissance piece that calls out for sainting
The billows, the ripples the silver-lined rims
Are strokes of a genius; of mother earth's whims.
The cumulonimbus, the rippling ceiling
Rumbles and rolls with the cracks that are pealing
The flickering tridents, the wrath of the gods
Strike awe in the temporary, tainted and flawed
And I, insubstantial, un-lasting and fading
Stand beneath hanging eaves, hearing and waiting
Beside me, within me, a childish voice
Hums a soft tune beneath all the noise:
The sky, the sky, it's all coming down
The indigo shroud; it's falling around
In crystalline spheres and mother earth's mist-
The dust is erupting, the earth feels its kiss.
Jul 28, 2015
Jul 28, 2015 at 4:22 PM UTC
Empty angels dance
upon the thunderhead,
skip amongst the ******
laugh amongst the dead,
twirl along the river Styx
to abandon those they've led.
Dec 30, 2014
Dec 30, 2014 at 6:13 AM UTC
The desert gradually turned to a grassy thicket
tamarack branches turn towards the fleeting dusk
above, ancient starlights fade in cimmerian skies
their ghostly glow choked by the sullen silhouettes
of churning charcoal clouds against the abyss.
The world feels as though she is being devoured
by nothing and emptiness.
Again the tortured-self awakes inside of Apricus
wrestling with its bindings merely out of gall.
It elicits ache in the belly of its captor,
the kind that only heartbreak makes inside us all
and once the tantrum cease,
it laugh a little before it speak
*The darkness comes, not for you and I alone
but in the end all life is its sacrifice,
why struggle any longer to change the minds of sheep?
Has the battle not hardened our flesh, sharpened our teeth,
has it not made us hungry for what lesser men eat?*
A thunderhead above him began to coil
tightening its hold around the moon,
each rotation siphoned the lunar light
till the well traveled soil of the trail
turn to a thin brush, then into a heavy wood.
Ask not if you shall stray from your path
rather ask if you will have the constitution
to find your way back in the black
of a stormy night.
Jul 30, 2015
Jul 30, 2015 at 11:32 PM UTC
Grandma calls from the back porch
Feeding moldy bread to the ducks on the pond
Fish came from the depths
And picked apart the biggest pieces
Brand new boots
Torn lace
Flapping on my foot
Tying the pieces around my ankle
Just the black toes of my boots
Toeing the edge of the toolshed roof
Your eyes grin up at me
Toss the hair behind your ear
Fingers
Touching strands
Beneath a rolling black thunderhead
jump
They drag the pond looking for your body
As if they wouldn't have seen you floating.from the shore
Cannons blast
And my eyes tear
And drop on the carpet
I don't know anything
Naked feet on the coffee table
Heaven needs no hand rails
Heaven is where you went
when your long neck broke
Against the wall of the dam
Heaven is where you kiss God's feet
For all of eternity
Kiss his feet
As he shakes the earth, sending buildings
Crashing down on lovers
Kiss his feet
He holds the gravity that drops bombs on children
kiss his feet
As he watches us **** one another
Over our ideas of him
I will be down here
Licking the deep cuts
I deserve
I will be down here
Haunted daily by what you might have been
Feb 5, 2012
Feb 5, 2012 at 3:11 AM UTC
Aaargh yes.....
With mighty clap
The Thunderhead with venom breaks.....
And jagged lightning streaks across the sky,
Blindingly, the white flash downward snakes
To impale the earth where frogs, unlucky, die.
Ha!
Mar 8, 2013
Mar 8, 2013 at 2:17 PM UTC
She survived the thunderhead of domestic disturbance,
She never planned on becoming the black sheep's shepherd,
Of her own meaningless drawings and poetry creations,
The demon split dimensions and how feeds on her patience,
That was before the red slits on her pearly white wrists,
The teddy bear thrashing and her hormonal cyst,
But that gave inspiration to climb out the abyss,
And continue writing what she liked and would love to coexist with,
Psychedelic language,
Her graphite's anguish,
Persisted to punish the the notepad with poetry painted,
But yesterday was cloudy,
And the short hours it felt,
That's when I realized I was writing about myself,
Mar 30, 2015
Mar 30, 2015 at 4:19 PM UTC
My eyes snaked,
sidewound, aware, wary.
Wretched wishes do not plague me now,
hopeless as they were in the empty cataclysm.
Yet, with this newfound freedom, flayed and
fragile, fumigating the baby breaths from my lips,
I still feel a sudden descent;
I do not trust my senses to allow me peace,
as I admire a cumulonimbus thunderhead, the sky turquoise through
the windshield, and the concoction of summer
sky tantrums in the afternoon and the kiss of stale air conditioned
zephyr propagate my subconscious, and,
thus, I have yielded to razor-edged heart shards again,
even after I pledged to leave them on the cold, tile floor.
Jul 10, 2013
Jul 10, 2013 at 8:23 PM UTC
Dance!
She told him.
So he drug his feet across the newspaper
turning headlines into layers of ice,
gliding just over the surface of a world
to him forgotten.
Boom!
The bass dropped and his heart nearly popped out of his chest.
His ribs too visible beneath his South Pole
bowed, creaked and shuttered
but muttered something about,
something about feeling alive.
Clap!
A series of muscle convulsions.
Shutter glimpses of the unseen acts of lightning
looking for a cloud to call home.
This one bolts into the highest thunderhead
and waits to be told to go. Go.
Sshhhh!
The sound of rain blinks from his eyes.
He squeezes the fruits of life
and serves the sour mixture to those who look on
with amazement and terror,
soaked in his story of craze and misfortune.
Clap!
This corner raises walls to his perception.
This is the metaphysical explanation,
God can be found in his dance.
This is where his last meal came from
and he won't leave the next one to chance.
Boom!
B-boy breaks down the laws Newton discovered.
Spinning until the world learns to turn
so that the seasons bring rain
on the just and on the unjust,
not just those who can afford to ignore each other.
Clap!
The applause brings tears to his mother's swollen eyes.
Swollen with pride and shame
of the things she's been pushed to, and pulled from.
She's reaching above the waves,
he's dancing his way from hell.
Sshhhh!
The ghosts now dispersed at the first sound of silence.
Their consciences are begging
more than the boy's pride will let him.
But their shoulders were born cold,
and the boy skates for nickels.
Clap!
As if God Himself were impressed
by the display of acrobatics set in rhythm,
the storm system raged and umbrellas dotted the streets.
Camouflage for his tears, he thought,
he always has what he needs in its season.
Boom!
The soul-box pumps out the old clocks.
Time has folded itself, molded itself, so it's no shock.
Rhythm and blue depression mixed up with B Boy steppin',
It's harder to find a meal on cold pavement than you'd think.
Dance!
She told him.
And he sinks.
Mar 22, 2012
Mar 22, 2012 at 12:32 AM UTC
#&@&!?
B l o w i n g W ind and planets from your mouth
Your head fills up like a thunderhead
With candy cane lightning
Burnt down birthday candle
Stick o dynamite
Feelin alright
Fire makes the light
In the middle of my fingers
Fireworks linger
Until angels come and wave them away
Off into space
The hope of the human race
Floating on radio signals
Short crested waves
Crests that peak in white foam
Plucked by strings
Finger bones
The fool withone hand
Juggles like a pro
Joining the circus when he was twelve
And one fateful day
On the fifteenth of may
A lion had his fingers for dinner
Would you sup with me?
The prince disguised as the pauper
You would I bet
Share my last cigarette
As we balance on a chain linked fence
Trapped in a cage
With only one book
You wouldn't believe
Which one I took
Feb 29, 2012
Feb 29, 2012 at 2:11 AM UTC
We saw the crosses
And the dozen of roses
Each for the 12 graves
Every tombstone reading
'Jesus Saves'
Then an open bible
With a funeral verse
That sounded like a fable
A flocking mass
All in black with poignant faces
A bald-headed reverend
Howling ashes to ashes
Clouds change to thunderhead
And the airstream consoles
The bodies that have lost their souls.
Jan 17, 2014
Jan 17, 2014 at 3:31 PM UTC
Thursday. My Indian GP sees me. Gives advice about my moods. Nods. Is sympathetic. Writes my prescription. Warns me to be alert and careful, if I am weaning myself off the medicine.
Friday. I crack a lame joke with the black girl in the chemist. Half-asleep, I apologise for mumbling; mutter something about it being Friday. Realise it’s the first time I’ve spoken today. I pay, pick up the tablets, walk off.
It’s a beautiful morning; cold, azure, crisp; real. The kind of morning when you remember why it’s worth being alive. The kind of morning when the traffic shuts up, and you hear the thrushes. The kind of morning when you realise you can do anything. Cumulus start to bubble up over London. You feel like you can fly through the clouds.
A thunderhead eclipses the sun. Six foot tall, fifteen stone; broad and handsome. Close cropped hair. Black boots, black shades. Tight, sleek, black jeans. George Cross embroidered over his heart. ******** stitched to the arm of his black NF jacket. Walking with the confidence of a man who knows he is Chosen.
I stumble.
the thrushes fall silently out of the sky
Jan 21, 2013
Jan 21, 2013 at 3:11 PM UTC
He passes through the room like a bubble in champagne, unattached, teflon coated, and somehow freer than the rest of us. “Jordie’s here,” Leong says in an excited whisper.
“Yeah,” I sigh, adjusting my mask, “saw him.” She smiles like a cat behind hers. Leong knows I’m crushing on Jordie and she finds it delicious information which she waves at me like a flag whenever he’s around.
We’re processing in, distancing and passing table to table. Leong can be with me because, as roommates, we’ll be quarantining together. Lisa joins us, she’s back from the restroom. “Jordie’s here,” she says, bouncing up on her toes to better scan the room.
I don’t look at him but he fills my horizon like a thunderhead. He’s all I can see, even when I’m not looking at him. We reach the end of a row of tables and bam, there he is, six feet away. He says hi, I say hi - I’m very professional as we exchange looping, harmless euphemisms for settling in for spring semester - then he’s called to the next station.
“If only we weren’t so busy,” I say, holding this fiction in front of me like a shield. “Yeah,” Leong and Lisa say, practically together, and smiling like thieves.
Jan 15, 2022
Jan 15, 2022 at 8:34 AM UTC
The seasons come and go
opportunities pass me by
no telling what’s next
each lesson becomes a piece of the puzzle
making for a new beginning
colors of the rainbow paint themselves across the sky
each different path way
leading to another dimension
Heads turn
the crowd erupts
staring me down
don’t know which way to go
the beckoning hand entices me forward
to reach the beyond
the unknown
the mysterious
Growing up
the world changing around me
my sweaty palms
slide helplessly down the slick rail
I grasp yet find nothing to hold on to
turn my head
staring down the dusty road
at what was there a moment ago but now is gone
vanishing without a trace
unseen steel weights
cling to my ankles
holding me down
the swinging lantern
flickers eerily on and off
propaganda caresses me into the matrix
little black and white children
with blue shirts and red eyes
run across the playground
laughing and playing
oblivious to the menacing
thunderhead looming above
Jul 18, 2010
Jul 18, 2010 at 2:52 PM UTC
I'm curious about you
want to touch
the places
you've been
and the places
your body's touched
but my mind screams
like a thunder spirit
all you do is
use her
rock her back and forth
all you do is
use ******
rock back and forth
South side
acting west side
and no direction
in my eyes
no future and I'm feeling
more and more
like a waste of time
nothing new
Mar 24, 2017
Mar 24, 2017 at 7:22 AM UTC
Sleep I cannot find
Tangled among the trains
Crossing federal highway 1
Markings on a digital clock
Change & change again
These are the terms of life
Pulling me down lonely sidewalks
The village by the sea escapes me as
I watch barefoot the cargo ships
Quitting the coast
A sky of spilled wine stained before
clouds of purple and orange construction paper filling me to a cell with sadness so complete that I would die to not feel it again
Now I am in the grip of the sea
The smell of it
In my skin and in my hair
Corona reflecting upon the waves
Until a thunderhead rears as the mustang nostrils flared and the foaming spray from its mouth touches me
Then the cold-
Then the rain upon my head
On my arms in my skin
Washing the poison from my body
Nov 26, 2015
Nov 26, 2015 at 8:09 AM UTC
The big picture looms
as if it were a thunderhead,
shadowing us all in entirety.
Sometimes it's difficult
to notice the little things
in this dusky light.
But, never stop looking.
Don't give up the fight.
Dawn will come,
and banish the night.
Jul 8, 2016
Jul 8, 2016 at 8:51 AM UTC
Tiny thing
keep to the skies
Glide and soar
Flee from the storm
Fragmented light
teasing through the darkness
the glum darkness
of the tyrant thunderhead
Tiny thing
you did not lose your way
Chaos is your passenger
your companion
The sky is an endless place
where you retire to your endless fate
Jun 10, 2012
Jun 10, 2012 at 9:24 PM UTC
It's like trying
to see lightning.
I sat long enough
this Tuesday twilight,
brave enough watching
the twilight sky,
brave enough to forgoe
a glance to the right
to make sure a racoon
hadn't stumbled upon me,
and it and I, startled,
would scrap, resulting
with my hand bitten -
embarrassing cowardice.
Brave enough I watched
and the lightning climbed
a height! It etched itself
round the top of the thunderhead
that towered above and above
other domes that I assumed were the height,
but higher even, the lightning climbed,
and I wondered if it knew I watched,
cause it took its time- not a blink,
but a scrawl up the round height of the dome
at a height that I dared not know existed.
Could not be more unremarkable, me,
on the stoop, on a Tuesday twilight,
but the height, and the height,
and the lightning will be there, good-
good as my mother's skin under
her thin, summer top, good as the
first girl fervent enough to undress
with me, good as my wife inviting
me to come through all the boredom
and distress, good as the end,
when I'll know the lightning
sees me, cause I'll see the lightning.
Jun 12, 2018
Jun 12, 2018 at 11:46 PM UTC
cracks in
the surface
spiderweb crisscross
across the frozen eyelid
of the lake
cracks in
the surface
split dendritically
across the ragged planes
of my arctic fingers
capped with
weather-worn callouses
swimming through
my thick hair frosted
with sun drop water crystals
and dry winter dandruff
snowflake scalp fluff
finger fly skin flurries
and I'm a coldfront
I'm a thunderhead
icicle snowdrift
I'm a rolling cloud
ice gale moonmist
trekkin through the
frosted forest with
fairy dusted
smiles and
snow filled
mittens
I'm a
fickleberry
tick tack
pick pack
**** it like a
smoke stack and
poke it with a
thumbtack
through the front
and out the back
and swan dive
into the cork board
leave it for another day
move on forward but
don't forget to stop
and pray
tongue tied
in a knot today
like a cherry stem
tongue tried
quite a lot, I say
to carry them
ever-powerful silly
magic mouth sounds
I went for a walk today.
Jan 29, 2015
Jan 29, 2015 at 10:07 AM UTC
A rattling machine gun aborts it's brainchild
Throughout my vacancy cerebral cortex mausoleum;
I'm just a jar of butterflies sitting on a log cabin stove
Burning
Churning a purging urchin out of turbulent ordeals;
Good thoughts hang along with trench coats
So it seems I'm jaded;
Catered to crushed normalcy
I despise my dormancy till my retinas are faded;
Seep into the cerulean belt
that watched over every soul dead;
Morph into a cloud
then graduate to a thunderhead;
Pouring my tears to a headache cacophony
Everyone is alerted;
So when I'm a surfacing tropical depression
I'm a ominous weapon
Here to annihilate the surfers;
Everyone is a brick in the wall
Covering the light of enlightenment;
I heard someone fell from that wall
And I'm that ******* that piloted it;
Drunken kamikaze;
With homage enough to honor honesty;
So I'm just here armor free;
Numbing the trauma center to give air to all
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 4:33 PM UTC
When I go to the beach I remember the first poem I ever wrote for you. It was the first real poem I ever wrote infused with something I'd never known before wave upon wave crashing in with love's desire like a never ending fire.
When I go to the beach I remember the first time I came inside you, the storm howling its voice harder than the headboard against the wall so no one could hear your muffled screams. Quietness ensued, our breathing as deep and easy as our hearts and then you said, "that was my first time...ever." "To come?" "Yes." "Ever?" "Yes."
When I go to the beach I remember the picture you gave me when you walked away, the one that sits on my desk now, the one with with the sea oats and the rising thunderhead and the horizon the same blue as your eyes, the one with the shells you picked up and attached to the simple frame.
Today, I went to the beach.
Sep 16, 2015
Sep 16, 2015 at 5:17 PM UTC