(a performance piece)

 

Confident, you throw back your head and declare

“I am a god! I control the weather”

and when I laugh to mock you

you knock the air and say

“you think that’s funny, kid? What do you want?”

and though laughter plays through my eyes

my insides scream and I

want to tell you that while this sunny

peaceful weather is really quite pleasant,

I want to tell you that I’ve been looking for a storm:

I want it with kisses like rain,

starting at my head and trickling down my body

spreading and seeping into and through my clothes, seeking skin;

that I want hands moving my hair and tracing my body

as closely as the winds that finely caress the clouds that shape the sky –

Already, the waters in the river run rapidly

I implore you to come play your thunder by the banks.

I want the embrace of a hurricane that sweeps about me

and holds me close, threatening to choke off air, to cut off all life

not beheld in the eye of the storm that is you and me;

I want your tongue on my neck sending the same

chills shivering down my spine as does the electric air created by lightning building –

I want that lightning, that instant in which you strike down into me –

quick, decisive, and sharp –

strike, flash –

and to erupt with the thunder of a moan so deep

there’s no need to count seconds between it and the flash

because there’s another strike, quick, strike, flash

you know the storm is not just near,

but it is happening, now and wild

with a fury that can crush cities,

sending in waves of pleasure

like floods, coming,

spilling over the banks onto the sands,

the dunes that are our bodies,

moving rhythmically like a buoy on the waters,

though they tremble with the excitement of a seismograph,

counting throttles and shakes not measurable on a richter scale

as cities fall and oceans rise and thunder moans

– no, I moan –

another strike, flash –

and my cries are confused with the scream of the wind,

howling and screeching laughingly through the cracks in the windows,

against the running rain – your fingertips – dancing excitedly across my body,

through the hail, the beating battering sounds of our hearts against these

tin roofed ribs, indenting the moment, the touchdown of the hurricane,

flooding and spinning as we are pulled, lifted out of our bodies

and into the blinding white summer winter all seasons sun,

and all at once we are katrina and andrew and opal

and galveston and orleans and l’aquila and francisco

until every last brick of tension and untrust has been shaken down

and we are at last displaced but content…

swept clean by the rains and baptised by the flood

and a steamy haze settles on the red dusk,

cloaking our bodies in a cool, dew drape,

and we are as a city torn apart,

naked…

I want so much to tell you that this is what I want

but as the smoky sky merely teases of rain destined for another city behind you,

you smiling and challenging me to challenge you,

the sun rests its warm hand on my shoulder.

I can only shrug.

I smile and say ‘this is really quite pleasant.’

because it is.

Only, I wanted a storm.

 

 

(2009)