The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see.
I can't run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up
a thundercloud
and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring ...
You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

oral transmission
Modulate - Cognate- Division
Cosmic - tuned in like Cognitive Transmission

This is my mission, to

Get up out the scene Live wild as a child
Dread my head, Hear cries like the Roar  I lionize
Deviant be me, othered for free
as the Nomos creates Signifier, Signified
somewhat like a homeless child stigmatized
caught outside our commercial enterprise

but

With enterprise, there enters lies,
Never earthbound my star ship seems to Actualize
Melodically.

So let me lyrically **** your path so you can shift past the cuts
Neva drinking the wine of wrath, made sour by sour patch cats blasted by vats OF GRAFFITI splats.

Culture slipping like gangsters simply sipping at the purple incision
instead we walk Holy like the cotton we missin

Tattoo my Secrets onto skin parchment ,
thats Ink advice ---:  People Lost in Duality, man thats just thinkin twice
Surrender and self-Sacrifice be the admission price
to see Kali singing blood mantras dancing through

Dreams of Ink darshan doorways
Tantric like Siva Approaches his consort for foreplay

My face is like a thundercloud, smiles formed outta cloud highs
Now my 3rd eye, washed in blood saw how Snakes stitch DNA
up and winding
and lemme tell you bro,
its some Nauesous stuff

Transcendent reality,
ego death till its fallacy,
recognize perfection
of life in the galaxy

So I toss out my ID, puff puff, its high ME
don't be Stuck like Ego grinding, Just saving souls don’t mind we,
go Indigo like Love in the margins, Golden souls attempting to live in holy gardens, ==========

We forget though

Neither death or immortality existed in the time before time,  of day or night no sign

There was Darkness hidden by Darkness , all was water but got started quick, by the sharpness of a god spark

kick crash hit, life spit out covered in emptiness

This was it, started from the bottom, rise in the power of heat,
dance tap ta dis beat Aware tapas generates so much heat Indiscreet
in abyss

But then desire became the fire, middle ground never higher than the smoke trails of the world's creation,
Spittin om proir flash forward funeral flames tamed by Tandava siva purifier

So this poet seeks in the heart of wisdom found in the bond of existence to non-existence
Knowledge that  I’m a livewire with a high resistance
I Complete my **** Through high persistence,

Eventually though,
the Fog rolls in again , agnosia forget the Cosmic condition
till then We soulfeed lyrics in-between kissing.

tepid waters do not lie
gale is to cyclone
as rain to thundercloud
no amount of counter-spin
will make them anything other
than atmospheric unrest

El Niño, La Niña
how to read
the unsettled waters
upwelling from the deep
what should feed us
leaves us starving, weak

orcas encircle their kin
emaciated mother, tiny calf
dying from ocean’s lack
while we look on and moan
all the power to change
if we only cared to own it

don’t you spark
the fire and
abandon me,
you abstraction
of insolent
soliloquy of
elegance; all
of existence
craves a taste
of your savory,
effortless
whimsicality;

i’ll sail upon
a thundercloud,
braid the stars
into my hair
and remunerate
for my flawed,
scarred skin,
scathed soul,
with mellow
eyelashes like
rain; macrocosms
look vain,
through a
night-owl’s eyes;

trust my lies
when you fancy
truth, a vile elusive
absolute; trust
my eyes when
you fancy cold
decimation of
love and gold;

the morse code:
remains of your
melodramatic memory;
never look away
from me; i’ll fix
you like a broken
puppy toy, scuttle
across the bedroom
floor with agonizing
apathy, stay forever
and always with me
with your binary love,
you trivial, perfect machine.

Just when we thought
this place couldn't get
any
more
depressing,
a detriment of inadequacy ensues,
and the following hour is spent
beneath a paled,
frosted-blue canvas,
atop a frigid construct
of tether, and steel.

BUT!

As quickly as the dystrophy settled
within minds scarcely caressed
by hallowed slumber,
a frail,
yet,
intensifying light
erupts from the faded line
that separates reality
from ethereality.

As this newly self-empowered
hero of the day
ceases the boundless tundra overhead
with a golden fluorescence
of warmth,
and rapture,
still,
ever-trifling is the southern counterpart.

HARK!

From out of the myriad sheets
of thundercloud gray,
laced with veins of majestic purple,
and glazed with the ensemble
of over-ripened peaches
that blanket the northern skies
of this dawning day
spawns a duet of our mothers'
most
sacred
creation.

HOW MAGNIFICENT!

This spectrum couplet
that champions the veil,
extruding their way out
from the darkest,
most steadfast regions
of our Terran celestial.

Betwixt these valours,
who stand
as beacons of glory
in these most
disparaging of times,
dance a flock
of little
black and white birds,
unveiling to our starving eyes,
ever so eager to feast-
their autumn courtship that,
in its own wonderment,
was that of a
silent
symphony.

LO!

For many a fort night,
we have gazed upon naught
but soot-black sand,
sun-bleached dirt,
and endless foliage,
who's lives have been bled dry
long before even our first wave achieved
boots on ground.

And even as the sun rose higher,
relieving the quietus night
to nothing
but a faded memoir,
so, too,
these masters of vibrancy
shall fade.

BUT!

Even in their last moments of glory,
they triumphed as heralds,
mutely evoking a message
that said:

*'Even at our final breaths,
we shall stand as strong as we did
when She first employed us
into Her heavens.
And until we are completely vanquished,
never; never shall we falter.'

I can't fly planes
today
Because the clouds are too grey
And once they fly
They gain too much weight
And decide to take a rest.
But that's the best day,
Because I can lay on Coco
Who is fast asleep
With her brown belly rambling
As I lay to hear her heartbeat.
Maybe it'll stop
when the drops are all done
And Mr. Thundercloud is gone.

But Ma says it's wrong
To wish him away,
Because Anger comes
But it does not always stay.
"Mr. Thundercloud will move on
And when he's done
The sun will show"
As she wraps her arms around me
And Kisses me on the head
" How many rain drops are there?
I think there's billions"
As the windows collect
Their estimates.
"Yes, Billions..."

Maybe it's greater than that.
Some days are especially bad
But some are steady and slow
Like a sad hurting pain
Dripping with each thought.
Millions of moments
In less than one second.

My anger rustles tree branches like fallen leaves,  
and I believe the wind can find a way to blow it all away,
like a tornado,  
spinning my emotions out of control,  
wherever they go,  
they'll move mountains and make streams,  
I believe the water will boil over with doubt and rage,  
crashing over the shores in waves,  and for days I believe in the truth of the storm,  
begging the skies for more,  
a single thundercloud with drops of jealousy so pure,
and thunder made from screams of outrage and misery,  
bolts of dreams,
crooked and lost at the seams,  
I believe in the calm,  
in the eye of the storm,  
that moment of happiness you'll never remember anymore,
and hail falls in a perfect form,
frozen and hard like my heart when the skies are clear,
I fear the clouds will disappear,  
along with everything I feel,
and when the sun shines,  
I can no longer heal,
the earthquake of despair rumbles though the ground,  
and the dirt moves like a whirlwind of truth,
light of fear starts shining through,  
frightening the leaves as they crumble to the earth,
they disperse in a tsunami of fury,
telling the story of the barren tree branches that were once my soul,
stealing the emotions and madness that had once made me whole

indeed, only yesterday i took to the arable seclusion,
the warm april air amplified by the oozing
sunshine, through the forest and into open
dilated pupil horizon - there ahead
the horrid geometry of elevated rectangular
pivots of civilisation, that ***** & Gomorrah
of urbanity; yet nearer me within a touch
a herd of horses grazing like tables in some
sort of Salvador Dalí immersion - beer in hand
i wandered among them, sat in turkish akimbo
and waited... no sooner than later i was whispering
with them, eating camomile flowers, one approached
with enough sincerity, so i cupped my hand and
poured some beer into it for him to drink it,
and he did - the african like nozzle so gooey and warm,
the eyes: goat-like slits... a pleasant reminder that
i'm yet to be fully urbane, only two generations
separate me from rural life, two... and the generation
in question was ushered out from the great project
of industrialisation, an exodus into cities precipitated
by the second world war... i too remember her
musings on the matter, she died aged ~90, in a
peaceful way, conscious, as Julius Caesar remarked
about death: rather than asleep, i want death to
come sudden! and indeed she collapsed, suddenly,
yet her memories still echo in me, donkey's years for
some, history books for others, but a vivid
eye-to-eye memorandum; so yes, only two generations
separate me and what would have been an endless
hubris in rural life, the best example i can cite
is a book of B & W photography by Edward Hartwig
entitled moja ziemia (my earth)... and that's the
beauty of what modernity can provide (given the location
you find yourself in)... on a Friday i can travel
to the hub of immigration that's east London,
namely Stratford... and on a Saturday i can walk into
a rural predictability, with owls, crows... horses...
crows... exactly! when have you ever spotted a crow
in an urban environment? hmm... never...
as the saying goes, the membrane of urban life
is predicated as: where the crows create a roundabout
and turn back among the wild - ahem - indeed my
wolf like howling, that ah woo! did get mention,
my neighbours freaked out, trigger-happy interventionists
for the police or ambulance... apparently freedom
of this nature freaks people out... more than the freedom
people have killing one another... odd, isn't it?
being asked, why did you do a wolfish in the middle
of the night? i just replied... er... because i can?
so if you think that all this social criticism i sometimes
unveil concerning western society, its values and its
shortcomings... i wouldn't want to be anywhere else...
and indeed social criticism is a sort of bitter-sweet
antagonism that just has to be evident, should another
maniac with a Kalashnikov or a suicide-vest end up
bringing a thundercloud to your little parade of
running a mile for cancer sufferers in your strange
twist-of-tale from colonial power to charity power...
added to the fact... that i write EVERYTHING drunk...
i take partial responsibility for my internal mechanics...
i'm writing... i'm not drink driving... so m'eh m'eh
and with what Shakespeare said about thumb biting
in Romeo & Juliet... indeed as cited

Samson - i do bite my thumb, sir.
Abram - do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
Sam. - is the law of our side, if i say aye?
Gregory - no.
Sam. - no, sir, i do not bite my thumb at you, sir;
             but i bite my thumb, sir.
Gre. - do you quarrel, sir?
Abr. - quarrel, sir! no, sir.

well... it wasn't really a biting of the thumb, revelatory
when you hear it decoded:
   you'd wedge your incisors behind your thumb's
nail and then flick it to craft a sound that's
the entire play rather than an onomatopoeia -
otherwise the meaning being, according to Nares:
'the thumb in this action represented a fig, and the
whole was equivalent to a fig for you, or the fico',
basically an f off or you're such a thick'oh /
custard brains.

Wetted grass reaches for its rightful late afternoon -
zenith as winged acrobatic performers delight -
and amaze with great zeal and utter independence
Simple golden flowers fill luscious , lawn borders
Intrepid sunshine breaking free of the thundercloud -
shackles , cool currents struggle with turbulent
water borne Summer air , laughter of Grackles dancing honeysuckle
woodlands
Green grasshoppers with velcro legs , stuck to ***** denim jeans , Luna moths hold curious twixt bronze porch torches where Walkingsticks review the epic day to the chorus of haunting Night Thrushes

The thundercloud parking garage swallows me whole
and drains the authenticity from my smile.
The descending escalator sends me to my personal hell.
All I can think of is my counterfeit countenance
or the carefree singing voice of my mother.
I grasp at the sound, the long lost curl of her hair,
the sun of her eyes.  It's like trying to catch smoke.
The tears before security tell me I'm not alone
though the final embrace of my mom disagrees.
She disappears, fades into the metal detectors.
I'm alone.
I float through the crowd, past half-machine men,
their brows furrowed in stone as they slice through lines
without one last look at the family they wish they had.
They race to winged robots that autograph the sky
like the parting at the end of a letter.  The goodbye.
The stain mochas of Starbucks beckon me.
The neon magazines cheer at me from Hudson News.
Together, we watch the clouds gobble the planes,
mourn the farewell of the familiar, the leaving of love.
Rain pummels the windows like tears down a face.
Again, the machine men, the magazines and mochas
comfort and reassure everything will be alright.

Underneath the weeds in her herb garden.
In between every dying star.
Running through the veins of the leaves within all the trees.
Behind every sleepy eye not wanting to say goodbye.
In the air between their joined hands.
Within every thundercloud and cool rain droplets.
Twisting through the quiet creek tracing the woods.
Throughout his aching fingertips.
In the gaps between their bones.

High school is a tricky beast
A fresh start, with new pencils and locker combinations
Lanky legs, too-short skirts
And nervous chit chat.  
Girls watch the boys
Ignore the girls
And head to football games with high hopes.  

Winter’s cutting chill sets in
Forcing everyone inside and
The school becomes a communal Petri dish.  
Homework, stress, tests, stress.
Finding a seat at lunch. Stress.  
Girls will shed sweaters for sweaty dancing
And late nights.

Spring rushes in,  
And the sun is welcomed like an old friend.  
Floral perfume and impatience
Hang in the air.
The boys ask out the girls (finally).
Wispy romances are full of sticky hands
And nervous firsts.

Like a roller coaster ride with twists and turns
Time’s up before you know it
And the beast spits you out of its clammy insides.  
The future looms like a thundercloud on the horizon
Until it cannot be ignored.  
The boys break the girl’s hearts,
And the girls learn to forget.  
High school is a tricky beast
You’ll never be the same.

Hallelujahs have turned.
Day into endless night.
Memories have spoiled.
Rid me of your sight.

Save me from this nightmare.
This thundercloud above.
I can't escape this anguish.
Still feel the aches of love.

Sad poems flow right through me.
They're like this bad disease.
They all reek of loneliness.
Though I write them with such ease.

Perhaps I am just waiting.
For someone new to come.
But until they show their face to me.
These saddened words will numb.

Starts with the cool wind
and the drizzle flows down
The heaven turns into grey
can you hear the cloud burst loud?
wondering where it came from and why
and yet
we lay on the grass, gazing on the sky.

he said; Hey! see the drench green layout
and hear the sprinkle falls around,
I looked here and there, and no one to be found,
wondering why did he say that and why
and yet
we lay on the grass, gazing on the sky.

In between the green, along with
the big cut down trees,
while the teeming street and the lawn
spread out with dry shredded leaves,
eyes met, and i swear they didn't lie,
and yet
we lay on the grass, gazing on the sky.

unending rain, thundercloud, remarkably beautiful
hopefully this creates a huge leisure pool
I chuckles and he sneeze,
and with the cold breeze,
we hoped we hold hands and fly,
and yet
we lay on the grass, gazing on the sky.

We're young so shouldn't we take every chance we get
Live life to the fullest, have days we won't forget
Make choices with no thoughts and no regrets
have love with a Julio or Juliet.

We're young so shouldn't we be loud
Yammering and Hammering be a thundercloud
Say what we feel just yell out loud
and have those moments when we are proud.

We're young so shouldn't we take a chance
Too increase our hearts with some teen romance
To dream of places like France
To not worry who sees how we dance

We're young so shouldn't we cheer
Have that "you can't touch me" atmosphere
Never feel like we have to disappear
away from the pressure just to preserve.

We're young

Journal Entry No. 43

We lived in a house made of sand and glass, far away from the mainland, across from a vast ocean covered in snow. I exposed your eyes to the television that was full of light and promise, and then I took it away in the middle of the night and dug a hole in the muddy ground and filled it with your extinguished passion and slices of your cadaver. From Chattanooga to Washington D.C., we traveled in a rowboat across treacherous waters, waves the size of skyscrapers, coasting through narrow passages packed with sheet metal and raw ice.


For hours I laid on my blue sofa and read multiple pages of The Windup Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood, hoping the characters would resolve the inner conflict that I harbored deep inside of my pit.


Cecilia never wanted to plunge her body into the swamp, while the alligators chewed on the bones of caribous, it reeked of misplaced pleasure and broken promises. I promised you I would build a white cathedral, but the smooth stones sat in the gazebo, waiting to be cut and shaped, the red brick stayed untouched, like the small of your back. Crazy women have entered my dreams and have died in my nightmares.

Cecilia gave me a rusted anchor and tied it around my neck, loosening it only to plant a wet kiss on my adam’s apple, as she leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “A universe exploded in the bottom of a wine bottle.” I followed her into the depths of the lush green forest, carrying a dagger and a flashlight. I shined the light on the brown bear that was eating honey from a collapsed hive. The dagger felt heavy in my hand, but I didn’t budge, and for minutes I stood there observing the eating habits of the brown bear, sweat dampening below my wrists.

Years went by, Cecilia growing bitter and resentful, having to mop off the marble floors with a wet rag, and wipe down the counters with a paper towel. Chore after chore, all this weight and animosity created something fierce and unsavory in her. I climbed a Mountain in California, wearing nothing but black sunglasses and a long white tunic. Pebbles became lodged in the back of my hiking boots, pressing into my skin, reminding me that some things would always remain tangible and difficult.

Warm and sticky, the rock candy lit up into a bluish flame, the pipe glazing up, the smoke percolating out and life being simple and free, dissolved into endless hopelessness. We were young and we were hungry; fighting off wolves and tigers that were starving like us. The smell of fresh meat bloomed through the air like oxygen breaking up into atoms.


Sadness permeated through the picturesque land, a storybook ending and a cinematic conclusion. She held the shotgun, pointed it at my chest, and pulled the trigger right as a deafening applause broke out from the grass tennis courts behind the open plain. This horrible and massive pain shot through my heart, causing me to fall back and hit the ground, hard, a lump in my arm emerging, my stomach turning in knots, as I felt my thundercloud softening into willow spring and silkworms. She moaned and screamed; I unable to grasp the intention in her words. Not like it was on purpose, but you get the gist of it.

So then it happened
And I stood there, a tidal wave of questions
Looming over me like a thundercloud
And I felt a sharp breath of air enter my lungs

I couldn’t believe, just couldn’t
After all this time, all those good times
That our friendship would be so altered
Perhaps, as a butterfly emerges from its cocoon

Papery wings brush the air by my ear
But its not a butterfly, floating by
Its coarse black hair, wavy black hair
And my hair is not black but brown

And I sigh and agree
Relief is not my only feeling,
And as the butterflies fly away
I lean into your hug, and

Feeling your hands on my back
Let myself be swung round in circles
Because we are so happy
We never want to break away

But we do and then,
The tidal wave is gone
But the questions remain
Bobbing ‘bout my head

I brush them away
And we walk down the hall
All doubt suspended
With your hand in mine

So then it happened
And I stand here, hugging you
Knowing as my mind sings
That wherever this may go
The future looks bright

Long white arms,
She had long white arms.
Almost glowing with their own light.

And long black hair. So black that the light seemed to be ****** into it's depths. It stole the lightness.

Eyes so stormy the sea bucks and brays when it sees the thunderclouds behind long thick lashes.

Her whole body is humming.

Deep powerful energy inside.
It's impossible to extract the nature of what's causing the convulsions.
Light or dark.
Milk or Coffee...
Or ancient pulsing rivers.
But it is causing her to crack and sway and cry and pray.
She took a razor

A razor so sharp it could cut through the worlds.

And she sliced a piece of pure white skin,

and out poured royal blue blood.

With hints of purple and specks of gold, and greenish hues,
with stars so old that you see the light of a million years ago, but it gets caught in your eye centuries after it dies.

The blood pours from her, trickle then a flow, expanding the universe.
Giving birth to galaxies.
And the energy is released from her.
The darkness and the light.
The demons and goddesses.
They all leave in a silent procession.
and she sways and topples, thundercloud eyes grow dark, then roll up and away.

Convulsions cease as she is submerged in the blue veined sea of her own creation.

The silent procession of her dark possession leaves on tiny ships into the dark horizon. Purple and gold galaxies.

We are all born from goddess blood.

My head is a thundercloud
Roiling with depressing thoughts
And deep claps of apathy
That give way to startling flashes of anxiety
Still, I know, this too shall pass

I had a fever
and in a dream I felt what I thought
was finally serene
a man cast a thunderbolt
down from a thundercloud
a ***** spoke in riddles
to try and get the pain out
I saw a god pushing a rock up a hill
a woman on the other side
pushing backwards still
a mermaid with a broke tail
sat on a pile of coins and started to wail
the ghosts of a thousand warriors
danced in a misty field while the sun rose
I was pulled along by the moon
and was asked to help her home
the flowers spoke with heads bent low
please dont take us, we die when we go
I said I could relate
they said no, no no no

I held my hand up towards the wind
the birds danced around each finger tip
singing their songs
like tears and shivers
it crumbles all around me
my heart turns gray
lingered on your beautiful music
I was the thundercloud
drifting through rain
feeding myself by the handfuls
I was at the corner of you
standing in the middle
when the world came to a stop
I screamed out to you
wishing you would say anything to me

i don't exactly remember how i read j. joyce's finnegans wake, but i read it, that grand interpretation of premature dementia of his daughter, never read it aloud, but i read it, and maybe that made me skew into some sort of symbolism, the attempt to capture too any sounds, perhaps all sounds, and enclose them in inexact onomatopoeias written down - dyslexia and excess spelling - indeed, once your intended creativity disappears, you begin to become entrenched with the few original ideas you had - then you begin to repeat yourself, crafting tombstones of your mind - so many shared lives, so few given a grand grave of being entombed in a familial grave.

difficult books, like Ezra's cantos i read in
uncomfortable positions,
usually on the windowsill, in a pseudo-akimbo
of a turk, one leg tangling the other under
my buttocks -
it eased the eyes to become eager and spur
the reading fascination on -
i'm not really a book worm as such,
i had six beers with me,
i climbed the hill leading unto the Essex
village of Havering-atte-Bower,
drank, smoked cigarettes, finished off
the 2 remaining cantos -
see, for a man i could do this,
a man who wrote a book...
i could never do such a thing for a woman
who'd written something...
it's called the brotherhood, otherwise
a marriage would have taken place -
once i reached the peak of the hill leading
to the village, a slight drizzle -
but it didn't escalate into a thundercloud,
thank you;
so i sat there, first watching traffic and smoking
and then started to annihilate the Pisan cantos...
on the horizon that old torture rack
near the roundabout - the *stocks,
behind me a church... a thief only walks through
a village once as a free man, indeed, then
clamped into the stocks... more than feet,
hands and feet... the church behind me...
cursing the cross / spine like that...
they still have the stocks in this village...
a husband and two girls were inspecting it
trying to find a culprit to make an example of
how the contraption worked...
i told you how it worked... then one villager
emerged from a house with a little blonde boy
to play football, kicked the ball high up intending
for it to land on my head - he apparently shouted
'heads!' - but because of headphones i didn't hear it,
it missed, then he tried to apologise -
after i finished the cantos i wished him a good day -
****** - you ever see that video with two idiots
playing about with a basketball in Trafalgar Sq.
and they bounced the ball against this huge gorilla's head?
you know what the gorilla did after the two idiots
tried to hush the "joke"? he got a glass bottle
and smashed it against one of the idiot's head... ha ha.
funny now, oh much more funnier than that
basketball trick... plump pluck of a plum...
boom... on the pavement, a Mike Tyson moment...
(yes, and by comparison, i'm a ******* albino chimpanze)
once finished i plucked a camomile flower
from the village lawn, put it at the end of
the Pisan cantos... give it a month and the
camomile will be mummified... dried out...
books are better than the intended pyramids...
you can mummify flowers using books,
give it a month and the flower will be dried out;
walking down the hill took a scenic route
listening to little birds and woodpeckers via
https://goo.gl/1eU4zB (the wooden fence proves
the route is inhabited by footprints from time to time).

There is thunder in my bones where you lay.
Your memories dissolve like salt into a wound.
To this day,
If anyone calls me 'Red,'
I will rain down like the storm cloud you always hoped I wasn't.
My collective tears will burst from the dam
Until not a spot on your soul is dry.
I will tear out the tendons, remove the connective tissues.
You wanted to make me yours,
To erase the personhood until I was pliable for your will.
To some extent, you succeeded.
Your memories are stored in my body, trauma.
The bleeding is internal, is not visible, is just as deadly,
But I have staunched the flow.
There is thunder where you lay in my bones,
Lightning where you touched me.
I am tearing you away tendril by sticky tendril.
I hope you feel the sting inside you.
This girl is not your object.
This girl is a hurricane.
This girl is the end of your world.
There are words for what you did,
****** assault, ****,
But they are not sufficient for the way
My psyche floated out of my skin.
You counted on the scars keeping me bound,
But you had only started the storm.
I am a thundercloud, a lightning goddess,
Made from the sun, wind, and ocean.
You called me 'Red' like my hair,
But I am 'Red' like my temper, like fire.
Try me once more, and I will teach you not to play games
With young girls.

Life seems unending.
Not in a flower field,
Dance in the rain,
Love to all kind of way.
No, life seems unending
In a dark forest,
Thundercloud overhead,
Death to love kind of way.

I wish that I had known in
That first minute we met
The unpayable debt
That I owed you.

Because you'd been abused
By the bone that refused you
And you hired me
To make up for that

Walking in that room
when you had tubes in your arms,
those singing morphine alarms
out of tune.

They had you sleeping and eating
And I didn't believe them
When they called you
A hurricane thundercloud

When I was checking vitals
I suggested a smile
You didn't talk for a while
You were freezing

You said you hated my tone
It made you feel so alone
So you told me
I had to be leaving

But something kept me standing
By that hospital bed
I should have quit but instead
I took care of you

You made me sleep all uneven
And I didn't believe them
When they told me that there
Was no saving you

it’s a tough business I’m in.
and I wouldn’t choose to do
anything else really.

sure, I’d write more or maybe
give a talk here or there if
they’d ask me, but then…

doing this thing in December
is the worst,
because you get to see just
how much poor these folks
are living in.

the quiet rumble of the big man
his voice like a rolling, roiling
thundercloud, not ready or willing
to unleash.

the snap and pop of the whole of him
as he stands to greet me is like the lightning
and his massive sigh as he returns to his recliner
is a gust of gray sorrow filling my sky.

“Look at this,” he says, “just look.”
I do; and I see the old scrub brush
Christmas tree he’s had his attendant
*****.
“There ain’t a ****** thing under there.” he says
to me and to the universe at large. “And, I’m already…”

I know what he means, as I sneak my litany in.
his answers are the same as always, he’s making
his way and in fair shape.

“I go to the pantry; sometimes to the church,” he continues.
“But, it’s hard to stand in line…last week was two hours for lunch.”

my mind runs to the wallet on my hip and the five crisp, new $100
bills inside, but they aren’t there, they never were, a daydream
of passing one over and seeing him smile, smiling back, and quietly
exiting with a: “shhh…”

but I’m broke too.

I ask weakly if there’s anything can be done.

ignoring the question,
he tells me that all of his good ****
is in hock so that he might get his sister
and his mama something nice.

and here I sat thinking hard, not smart, about
how sometimes it’s not Christmas,
sometimes it’s just a Friday.

“I’ve hocked my good **** before.” he says.
“Take a few months of being really flat to get it back.”

what the **** does really flat look like comparatively I wonder
but don’t ask.

“It’s about the giving.” he rumbles at me.
“It’s about showing the people that care about you
that you care about them too.”

reaching behind his massive self, he grins at me;
pulls a small, carefully wrapped box, from its hiding place.

“Open it.” he instructs.

and I do.

*
-JBClaywell
©P&ZPublucations; 2015

I want the blood I shed to mean something.
Is it bad that I wonder what people would say, how they'd react if I was gone?
I'm not being dark. I'm musing.

I don't want to be a thorn in anyone's side, I don't wish for attention that sometimes I forget I need.
I'll be sitting, music blasting out the demons, and realize I've forgotten to eat. To sleep. To breathe.

It's to the point where it's almost not sad anymore, you know? Like I've forgotten how it was before this cloud became something that'd stay with me forever. And it's at coasting, numb points like this where I honestly don't even know if I want to feel better. What is better, anyways?

And they always tell me I have so much to live for. And I do, that's the only reason I don't go. It's not the fact that I'd miss so much about my life and everything that I have before me to accomplish.

I don't want to hurt anyone by leaving, even though my hurting would be over. This is the one area where I wish my incessant selfishness would take over.

So, pardon my venting, pardon my sad songs, pardon my black and white photos. There isn't much silence, happy music, or color in my life right now. And I'm okay with it, as much as the pain stabs, it's more of a dull pain.

Maybe one day I'll understand how it is to feel again. Maybe. No one would have even known  if I hadn't had an outburst, let my selfishness take over in a thundercloud of confusion. It won't happen again, I can't let it. I can bottle feelings. Letting go is harder. They didn't know, it needs to be that way. They need to be protected~<3

*And she cried,
"Kiss it all better, I'm not ready to go
It's not your fault, love
You didn't know, you didn't know"