Today a Low Pressure Zone. Tomorrow...

In the rain you lose the town.

The wind is up, people gone.

The streets are yours, yours alone;

Yours and the gloom that settled down.

In the wind you’re whipped about

With all your pasts in your soul

Blown exposed once again

To all old lingering doubt.

In the storm the colors fade,

Differences all the same,

Miserable, cold and wet

Blended in some pale lemonade

That you wear instead of drink.

It bleeds, it seeps, it soaks through

All protective covering

Till your spirit’s spirit sinks.

In this dim and dismal day

When all is so cold and dark,

Splash the puddles with your feet

And blindly go upon your way.

Photos: Downtown Lewes, DE in the rain taken by the author, February 2011.

Overwhelming Forces

The invading army came early;

Early it came,

With saturation bombing at the dawn;

Covering the dawn with so much haze

The haze blotted out the sky.

But we thought we were ready,

Ready when it came

For it came with lesser forces.

Although the forces saturated the ground

Our ground could not be taken.

We could move.

We could mobilize,

We could get about

And be resupplied.

But our weather scouts had been in error.

An error in the chill

And this chill changed this rain.

Now this rain was thunder snow

And on this error early we are snowbound.

Photo: The Canal, Lewes, DE, January 2011, taken by the author.


Please scroll down and turn off my music player if you choose to watch the video.

Lightning Strikes

I can see the neon in the bar

Across the canal.

And the lightning strikes

And the water stirs.

She wears that favorite dress.

The rain is blowing straight.

And she must have gotten wet.

Restraints are loosening up

As lightning strikes.

It is red blue neon in the bar

Where the shadows drink

Near an empty table.

And it puddles on the floor

The dress she doesn’t wear.

I see the moored boat bob

In the neon from the bar

And drink my whiskey neat

Until the lightning strikes.

I Suggest you scroll down and turn off my music player before viewing the video.

Let's explain a little about this one.

My wife and I spent a couple days and nights at The Inn on Canal Square in Lewes, Delaware back on January 24, 25, 26. This is a very nice little hotel in a nice little town. We have stayed there at least three times now. This year the weather turned frightful. It rained all day on the 26 until it turned to sleet about dinner time and then to snow. It was a large snowstorm to the North back where we lived, about 12 inches.

I was sitting in the Inn looking out the window. It was dark and there was thunder and lightning to go with the snow. It was very moody and sinister in a way. I had the thought, "I can see the neon in the bar across the canal." I picked up a pad  that my friend, Ron had given me (it had his picture on it) and just wrote this little poem. I think it has an ominous feel.

The woman who appears in the movie a couple times is my wife. I use her a lot for book covers and illustrations because she is pretty and she was once a model. Other than that, the poem is a fiction. My wife was not having an affair, I was not sitting in a bar "drinking my whiskey neat". That is not my thing at all.

Note: Since I originally published this poem at Poetry Vortex I found some people were confused by the subtext. I have since rewritten a couple of the key lines, which are what are printed here. If you play the video you will hear the original. Hopefully the light changes make it clear about who is who, who is doing what and who is where in this ditty. (6/2/2011) 

Fading Away

The old woman like a prophet sat deep in the café.

I took a table with coffee cup and folded paper at my hand.

“It is fading away,” she said, her voice a gravel pit of age.

Nodding politely, I tapped my paper and gave a grin.

Across the way sat condiments of sweetener and cream.

I reached the pitcher and poured a stream from the lip

And watched the dark brown color fade away to mud.

Fade away like the sun, like the day, like the time

And the lady sat dissolving into the background dim,

While I read of war and crime and drug abuse

And slowly sipped away the liquid in my cup

As if sipping away the bloodlust and greed of life.

“It is fading away,” she said, this soothsayer behind.

“It is gone,” I replied and went for another café au lait.

The hours passed and daylight faded from where we sat.

The paper lay wrinkled, no jobs were certain found,

Just hopeful circled blips in the shrinking classified.

I stared at my hands and the fading circle from a ring.

The skin was spotted now; the palms are growing soft.

“It is fading away,” she said this seer of cosmic truth.

“The world we knew?” “No,” she sadly replied, “my sight.”

Photo: The Canal, Lewes, DE. Taken by the author, 2009