Did You Hear The Storm Coming?
Rhymed Prose
By the time you would’ve siphoned
another stale breath from a recycled coolant
you would’ve failed once and for all
to hear its muffled steps
or hoovering squalls
wailing into reaches of a cindered sky
her blue muslin drenched and denied
the scrawl of trilling plumes overhead
winged black curlicues clipped in dread
and a hum in your throat feels torn and trimmed
fashioned into a whirlwind’s grin
It’s only now that you sense it first
the smog — its form and face — a gnarly rut
of an ancient God lurched from within
an unsullied name left chemically dangling
by welts of enamel sinew
quietly ruffling life
below the sea of your face
that now swarms
with the lash of weeds and snakes
and from the dark earth of your tongue
emerges an SOS perched numb
buoyant like dew on quivering lips
presumably a weather warning’s hieroglyph
This is when you’re supposed to grope your storm tape
or pretend to, just as it’s guttering forth from a howling crevice
sucking you in by cheek and iris
but there’s a way in which this wind winds
down your empty larynx
in the laughter of a roomful of friends
and so you briefly invite it in
Seemed that it smirked to say
like the hungry wolf in a cautionary tale
“This is why you don’t kiss strangers”
See how your mouth’s profaned dry
and his — a parched zephyr
whistling in filaments of rain
swelling through bone and bane
by brimfuls of mud and wreckage
You can inch back to evade its gust
or offer your lung to its November thrush
but what of the audacity of a cry
‘midst thundering drones
What of the purity of white
in the days that are lawlessly mist and foam
Maybe tomorrow
he could teach you
how to read between lines
how to rage
before shapeshifting
into a reposing feline
Maybe tomorrow
you could teach him
how to ebb softly
in two directions
at once in the past and present
at once within the knowing muse and lost poet.
Notes: There’s this still from every post-apocalyptic movie in which characters, like small dots in a large scheme of things, try to dodge the gargantuan fury of nature, be it a storm, or earthquake or a forest fire, but at the same are paralyzed in its wake. This prose is inspired by that specific moment.
Thank you for reading!
