Brooding Sunset Before The Storm
Brooding sunset before the storm. Over ripe apricot
left out in the sun too long. Heat brain
boiling its thoughts in their own womb.
The clouds lumber like thundering Diplodoci
Slowly and in herds. Continental rifts in Pangaea.
Black outs and the lightning roots
of unknown blossoms sticking out their tongues
like petals to taste the first drops of rain.
The air menacing, thick, humid as lipstick
foreshadowing climactic things to come.
Sky bound i.e.d.s, and the pigeons scattering
for cover under the eves from overhead drones
that have been circling all afternoon
with the turkey vultures looking for road kill.
The windows set up like easels for the show.
Action paintings of still life with blitzkrieg.
The crackling of glass that layered black over white.
Oleaceous vapours of asphalt on roofs and roads.
I can smell the late Jurassic in rut from here
as black pearls roll off my skin like new moons
sweating tar. And now it's as dark as a crucifixion
on daylight savings time, as the opalescent grays
homogenize into Bosch armies on the Western Front
just before a rolling barrage in No Man's Land.
The hemorrhaging, the deluge, the venting, the rage,
a welcome relief to holding it all in though
everybody's not going to like what they hear
and the fire hydrants are jealous of the rain
and the end of the world is more American than Mayan
bring it on like the hillbilly hippies drunk at the Imperial.
Anticipation. Latent exhilaration. Acoustic guitars
meditating in the corner, chanting aum to resonate
with the positive ions of a punk rock band on the rampage.
The cows plop down in the fields, and the seagulls
for the duration of the saturation bombing run
are grounded like kites on a reconnaissance mission.
Hilarity of chaos outflanking the usual order of things.
Mosquitoes and blackflies biding their time
under the monstrous leaves of the soft basswood trees.
Wrens and swallows in their medicine bags and begging bowls,
bees in their hives, prophets in the belly of the whale,
here comes a delegation of lightning rods to reason
with the open-handed extravagance of the revelation
that we're as vulnerable as we ever were
in a time of stagnation to cooking the books
when the gods come to get even with us ethically
and the imagination asserts its ancient privileges
over the prophylactic rituals of our own worst case scenarios.
[...] Read more
poem by Patrick White
Added by Poetry Lover
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