When Rain No Longer Falls

Invariably our best nights were those when it rained. - Thoreau

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Image: No Rain by Joan Mitchell,  oil on canvas 1976

in the primordial, fallen reign of obedience

tears dilute blood

hearts frozen in time

flesh dances like a puppet with no strings

memory scrapes and fails

abstract redundancy is weary

so faint

so thirsty

a lipstick sun burns

a desiccate river turns

a parched moon thirsts

the lubrication of sex is but a worn, jaded tool

who's fanning the flames

when rain no longer falls

lingering in suspension

prisoner of another dimension

emotions march with spirits to an intangible battle

smell of death everywhere

sound of souls wailing

who's hammering the nails

wielding the tired gavel

when fingers lose their bony grip

the world is a plastic desert

eden an unreachable oasis

like a naked phoenix, night rises and day falls

as heaven calls

when rain no longer falls

Author's Note

"A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper." - Thoreau