storm’d

That rain out there sounds like applause. The leaves and traffic, scattered grass and monogrammed concrete are all performing stunningly tonight. An encore suggests the city listeners are appreciative. The ones with the box seats are the poets, the fearless squirrels latching onto plaid-pattered screens, pigeons with slippery wings and breath of barbecue steam. Deep inside that puddle beneath your window, a curl floats like an emaciated tugboat. Engine of railroad lineage. Propeller curves and footnoted presence in books and dream sequences. This does not have to be a tragedy. Nor will there be a prologue or feast of sequels. Each storm is its own language. Also inside that puddle is a limb. Cannot call it arm or third of leg. It is collaged and hungry, sipping on rainwater from imaginary straw made of molecular mosh-pit. There is a table of contents decoupaging the skin. How lovely how odd how wet this all is and then clothes come off because synthetics leave too many imprints and reminders of factories. The earth desires nudity, so it drenches; it floats umbrellas away from wrists and curled fingertips. This should be a performance. This should induce romanticism. We should be triggered by its miasmic reminder of the last time.

the language of rainfall

Awake. To the sounds of a storm, bursting from the sky, bruising the clouds, angering the leaves who dream.

A drum. Of fingertips tapping dripped rhythm against windowpane and domes of water nap like bats, clinging to branches.

Attack. A thunderous bolt shatters the grey into purple and chartreuse and then a blur of eyesight.

A body slurs toward the noise. The indigestion of wetness. A devouring of weathered atmosphere.

A memory is pulled out like naughty grey hair–
like extracted pit in olive
like admittance of love for another.

There was that time you reached down to find my smallness
the rain interrupted our lips
the rain acknowledged the thinness of fabrics
the rain tied my hair into yours

It falls because of gravity
I fall because of starvation and inconsideration to appetite

It aids the ecosystem, the growth for hydroelectric power plants and crop irrigation.
I aid poems, the evolution of scattered thoughts and skin irritation.

There is a violence to this crime spree of sidewalk hammering
Puddles tease bodies, in search of a bathtub or a swimming pool or ocean to dive into.

What is our necessity for umbrellas,
rainfall weaponry?

There is a pause now between sky and triggered water leak.

I count the drips outside my window,
collecting on my thighs that I leave out just for mathematics.

I study the wind that replaces the rain that waits for the sun that is turned off by these umbrellas that hide faces and hair weaves.

A car horn.
A woman yells at her child.
Public radio stuck inside computer.
A slurp of coffee.
A growl of stomach.

Listen.
I hear you too.