Flash flood

On the day of Epiphany

the sky floated dirty grey sponges,

called storm clouds by some

which wrench and wring overhead

my tin box called a truck

for the second after-

noon, awaiting the bell, it begins to flood.

El Niño, they all point, name, and blame-

not the children though, who don't know

him yet and squeal at the thunder in de-

light-ning, claps all around.

An ominous sound to

a sitting truck, quaking the floorboards rumble,

but I am grounded, in technical terms.

Rivers run along the roads,

gurgling gutters are choking

on the leaves and it is okay,

I had nothing to say today,

anyway. Listening to the lights

blur and sob, struck dark as night

at two-until a conflicting flash, a

sneaking streak, the epiphany speaks,

Time is not everything.

The wind is whipping

laterally, bending palms

like cracking knuckles

lumber joints that prefer

dancing with Saint Ana and yet

a seasonal storm is all winter needs

to feel right

on Time...

Pouring my heart out into the rain,

watching all my words spool and eddy

washing away, skipping over school

and strangle the drain

plundering prudence

scatter the slated soggy students.

Composed 1/7/16.

Image by By Eliud Echevarria (This image is from the FEMA Photo Library.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Under the see

Here, you in the middle.

Music in dancing smoke.

Dense vaporous heat wrapped in red

ripples and shards carry and throw

light bent, fractured panes

strewn before open eyes

widely receptive, a hungry glint

absorbing the whole shaft.

Do not speak of experience

like goosebumps and coincidence,

deja vu and waking dreams worn

on this path. You picked the way

reflected back in pouring pail eyes to

spinning sapphire seas stuck inside your inertial feeling.

You cannot tell

of the way the moon

holds onto you in the crook

of its long arm showing you more.

Or how the sun

seduces you under its warm endless well

of desire to strip you down, and suck you up.

Do not try to repeat what was implied

in the language

of hummingbirds that hover,

of cats that crowd around you,

of swaddled babes enrapt,

of elderly enduring and shaking

off your ghosts.

You stood under all too well. Father time and Mother earth,

hospitable surrogates serving

senseless, undecipherable epiphanies.

You see.

Image of painting by By William Savage Cooper, Phantasy c.1896 [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Oversight Counsel

Excuse me-
have you seen my epiphany?
It was about yay high-
pretty round-ish
with flecks in the middle?
Someone said it should be
passing through here around noon-
but I did not catch the Time Zone
I am in.

I am scanning the
event horizon
to spot that little anomaly-
sometimes it looks like an arrow
but most often it
blends in with the background.

It is reckless to lose ideas, I know,
someone else could pick one up
polish it, call it a gem,
and get carried away with it
along some locomotive lines,
who knows
where they’d end up.

This one ran away from me.
Negligence, yes.
I wasn't looking-
forgot to pay attention-
to all those stolen seconds
I took for granted, as though
they were lukewarm and left over.
I understand why I left me too.

If you see anything
that resembles nonsense
it was mine.

Composed 1/4/16.


Image By Creator:Eugeniusz Ludwik Dąbrowa-Dąbrowski (cyfrowe.mnw.art.pl) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.