first poetical offering to the great Tori

[shybard]

Connections

Sipping-sipping coffee-milk in the morning
(with the unexpected tang of vanilla)
and there’s gonna be a storm tonight
if I’m lucky.

And to work I slip away
in the moisture-ridden-midday-heat,
with summer (I swear) blending with
Hell.

The air’s breath rests on my skin
and I think of you. My hands callus
and I slip to the breakroom to rest
my feet.

The coffee loses out. I wipe my forehead
and sip water. Old ladies buy catfood,
and dogfood, and rice.

I return home to pasta and my stereo
(indecisive as to the importance of each)
and I sit-
here.
Now.

As a blessèd storm shudders outside.
And the day is finally black. And the rain stomps,
hisses, stutters in anger, and repeats-
I feel the cool through the window.

It loves me as I love it. It calls to me
in the deep, nascent bowels of lifetimes
of longing.

The way I wish you needed me.
And I won’t tell you. I won’t say
a word.

And seven years waited-unknowingly-
for a few words. A voice. A picture.

Lying in the nascent bowels of a boy’s
heart (waiting in the whirls of a midnight
storm, as you rest elsewhere, with whatever
slight hope it has of maturity, manhood,
or tomorrow.)

And it quiets. Then booms. And dogs
bark, startled.

And the light glows on the thought of
you.

And I think-
What is lightning without thunder?
Just a hollow promise. Shallow. Shallow
like the pools that line the driveway
where the children play. Undeveloped.
Immature.

And I think-
What am I (to be) without you?

And I am blessed-if ever I shall be-

Living in the storm at night
as water falls, thunder rails,
and light touches us-
as we shudder.