It’s the happy ones people hate
for all their sighs as winter waves
setting in the shores, quiet yet profound;
I am the lightning bolt
by the telephone tower outside Cleveland;
I am striking everywhere. Yet how
can you hear me
here where thoughts are softer than memories
you have of bench sitting after soccer?
Memories of
strawberry fields
after first rush, picking the old, dropped berries up in their
purpleness and looking to see if they’re ok;
you’re caught in comfort and lost out of touch
of those that matter, dear poet, locked out in hate.

You think you hear the quakes but can’t see me,
can’t see the storm, can’t look out your
bolted windows, these lashed eyes grayed up in mist.
All you hear is the glass rattling on the desk, little voice muted.
It’s happy people you hate,
happy for whatever causation suits them then,
and hell, you hate only because you want
happiness too. Locking the doors and feeling
the walls shake is how you
pick up the berries,
sigh into some sort of pillow, blanket,
hoping these storms will pass;
just look and see! Isn’t the world lit by lightning?
Throw your shoulders
outside to
see how we strive with light and
noise and see our passion,
so feel the rain, so feel the shaking
in the trees as the beauty takes hold –
one Mississippi, two Mississippi –
it’s close! Throw open the shutters,
hold open your panes, let the
wind on through and blend into your words sitting so
in your little journal, poet, the bounded book
caught in the rug burns and dissolving cities
sinking through your mind.

The lightning murmurs
while you hold shut these eyes.
The world comes
in thunderheads
and mindquakes and lightquakes
full in their mercy and fierce in their might,
filling the gutters and shattering the skies.

Worlds are open even in empty rooms,
empty chairs and open floors,
but shut like bear traps and slamming doors from you, little one,
hiding under beds
in fear of nothingness
and the noise going on outdoors.