Longingly

daughter of thunder · Longingly

A quaver and a crack—

It is always this way before the deluge,

The ever-so-slight jag of raised pitch,

A jutting-out of intonation where once there

stood still.

That is how we know the flood has arrived.

A steady snot stream now trickling

 through my left nostril 

A hyperventilating puddle of pleas

P- gasp p-p-puh gasp please

Please?

It is pathetic 

I am pathetic, really.

You, empathetic.

Really.

Have already felt the twist of poison in your gut 

where I saw pure gold

 (I swear to you, it glistened from a distance)

You are cut at the thought of what its blunt edge

could do to my fingers out-stretched 

(Even rust and rot glimmer under just the right lighting)

“My darling, my child

Can’t you see there’s nothing there for you?”

ABOUT// wanting what we should not

1 John 5:14

An Elopement

daughter of thunder · An Elopement

If a cloud had tennis shoes, 

he couldn’t float any faster

than the speed I have traveled

 to escape

he asked me: “where to in such a fury?”

And I said to sir stratus you stupid cloud I’m going nowhere fast.

Sir nimbo flexed his fluff until the blue 

bent around him and got caught,

feelings and all.

In empathy with blue, I called sir nimbo 

the shape of an ape

or the shape of an aperture always taking taking light;

oh, I know an unrequited love when I see one.

Columbo-lonimbus passed gas

any which way it fit her fancy. 

Suppose I fit her fancy when she boom-sang at me.

But I am too preoccupied 

with going nowhere quite quickly

to be swayed any which way

she might choose to persuade me.

Now, Sircirrus in all of his creamy spoonful of dream

Understood the overstatement of here or there

and now now now

so he readily obliged when my head reached his height

and I hummed to the beat of birdwings 

slowly, making their way toward

the end of the day.

About// my head is often in the clouds because no one can hurt my feelings up here

Res Ipsa Loquitur (The Thing Speaks for Itself)

daughter of thunder · Res Ipsa Loquitur (The Thing Speaks for Itself)

 

Rotting wood is the thing which has voiced its malcontent,

(Said “you know, I wouldn’t be so frayed 

had the boy mopped up the mess he made”).

Envy be that rotting wood, 

that splintered degenerate of what was once wholly. 

What was once holy now leached onto and

full of holes—

this fallacy that another's glory burns brighter than 

what one has been gifted.

This that ache that screams for itself

The river desecrate brown-bubbles forth its grievance 

(Said “I certainly didn’t slip myself this poison").

Deceit, a most toxic waste, has peered at her own reflection 

but cannot see the foul fuming upward from the creek;

has been seeping in her filth for so long

she cannot smell the way the once-crystal river now

harbors the dead.

But certain as a truth will shed any remnant of ruse,

this that reek that roars for itself.

The black bear has betrayed her cub for 

40 pieces of silver fish!

A vulture feasts on the fruit of its own womb.

Even still,

After man has slapped his Father’s cheek

and run away with reckless abandon,

face still stinging with hurt,

He beckons for his child:

come home come home come home

about// “Res Ipsa Loquitur” is, simply put, a type of legal claim that suggests a violation has occurred because of negligence.

the thing (abandonment of Jehovah God) speaks for itself (the consequences of said abandonment)

Do you think it’s possible for a human to neglect God?

James 4:4

An Undressed Wound

daughter of thunder · An Undressed Wound

 I.

 What is the point of dissecting an open wound?

I mean, the thing is already weeping. 

Do you think coagulation cares who the culprit is

so long as the clot can form?

What to do when the clot cannot form—

Peel back the gauze and ask yourself why:

By 5 I understood segregation before I could spell it.

More a feeling crept up the black of my spine 

than an abolished amendment.

“Nigger” under the breath by a boy who did not 

understand the meaning of my second name.

The undressed wound pleading: 

“No, but you’ve shaded my stars into night

Can’t you see Ufuoma means ‘peace of God’?”

A teen-aged blade to flesh the way his white friends

eyed-balled my skin

and then his skin

and then my skin.

“Yuck!” being the preliminary verdict before

being afforded the opportunity to justify my 

right to love him.

So by the time I reached 21,

I finally understood the shape of the purple bruising,

Could trace and retrace every bump and groove by

the ugly river it ran through my epithelium.

Were I to count the ways my fellow 

Homo sapiens have tried to inject shame into

who I perceive myself to be,

to pry their greedy little fingers into my consciousness,

Perhaps they would outnumber the melanocytes themselves!

As if another human

could ever discern through physical means what 

God Himself has crowned holy.

II.

While my undressed wound has your attention,

it would like to state for the record it 

did not ask to be here

(is in fact being slaughtered alive by an antibody army 

of its own making)

which is to say:

If there is a wound,

there will always be a healing

Oh if only we would let it.

About: I really believe there are some deep-seated and gangrenous wounds only God can relieve us from, one of them being racism.

postscript: On a slightly lighter note, our immunity systems are fascinating, aren’t they? Scarring by sheer feat of nature.

Brontide

daughter of thunder · Brontide

(Hmmm)

A bunch of hot air— 

Were I so frivolous a creature,

One could forgive all of those electrons’ misfortune;

the expansion and collapse amid a million

microscopic cell-cities.

But the brontide, he’s rolling in.

(Hmmm)

Lesions come lightning, whiplash pour hail!

Or is the smoking black gash

impaled on the evergreen a whimsy of light?

A big magical bang of grand ingenuity,

if you will?

(As if all the atoms in the atmosphere could conjure love)

 And what of the Atlantic?

What contrived power could convince an entire sea

to ripple at the suggestion of sound waves?

 

No, but the brontide, she’s rolling in.

(Hmmmm)

The manic laughter of rain, like thunder,

is seen before it is heard. 

The air swells sick with the sound

(you know the grayishblue your daddy warned you about),

An acidic drip lumped in your throat,

The unnerving buzz of chemical imbalance,

Arthritic chattering in both knees.

(Mmmm!!)

My God,

How many nights could Noah count constellations 

In a dry sky

Before the first decibels of thunder

Cracked the heavens wide open?

2 Peter 3:9 & 2 Peter 2:5

About: brontide (ˈbrän‧ˌtīd) noun— a low muffled sound like distant thunder

 

postscript: wow, yet another metaphorical physics poem from yours truly

I Am Not a Euphemism

daughter of thunder · I Am Not a Euphemism

 

I am a place you go laid bare

Do not look me in the eye holding a brick

And call it a blade.

True, the spade and mortar both build 

But the brick stands only as tall as the blade allows it to see;

Provoke the wall, I crumble at your feet

I am a place you go collapsed

Already a smelling fruit 

Overripe to all of that intimation 

Were subtlety sweet, my juice is run-dry with overflow.

Have been peeled back of virtue,

All the while praying to appear wholesome 

and worthy of your teeth

I am a place you go artless

Is no euphemism for 

this decay

this decomposition of logical thought

a brass polished brilliant from 

friction on friction on friction

Fact: I am a place you go unguarded against love

Raging heart rapid

as the wolf dashing tirelessly toward its end;

Do not look the wolf in the eye holding out bait

And claim it is not three tugs shy of a noose

Tell me precisely what you mean

I promise you, I mean precisely what I say.

Postscript// so much time for self-reflection, self-improvement and most importantly, the giving of oneself to others

Open Letter to a Field of Poppies

daughter of thunder · Open Letter to a Field of Poppies

 Aren’t we pathetic?

The inertia in the stance of our stems,

The solidarity of our collective spine 

tall as the mountain faith alone could uproot.

What the sun-beat calls foolish we consider

resolute come torrent or tempest wind.

And where to begin with our pistils shooting blind into sky?

No, but not for naught!

Always the fruit of another stamen’s labor to 

Remind us of what we were planted in this field to do. 

What a passerine might perceive as 

futile vanity— 

the way our crimson petals pop;

tiny fists of immortal spring—

Is in fact the instinct to survive,

if not gracefully.

 

No winter could defy us our rightful bloom,

no weed, our beauty.

And alas,

Our coat of sepal, 

the wind that drives open the stigma and pushes the pollen down down

The root, of course the root, always thirst and raw lust

Is perpetually satisfied if only we would let it.

All so that we can begin again.

Our river, One River,

our God, one God.

2 Chronicles 20:17