One Hundred and Fifty Third Entry

Still hanging in there, like that little kitty on the branch in the motivational poster.
This last poem at read at Amy Lawless' Control Reading Series. You should all go to it. it's muy bueno.

p.s. the Weather Wand is a weapon used by DC supervillain the Weather Wizard. I don't actually know if that has any relevance.

Here's my poem:

THE WEATHER WAND

There is a wheel made of thirty spokes,
meant not to roll across the muddy street.
Its time is measured by a general weathering;
as the wood chips and whitens, the wheel
eventually leaves the apartment, nuzzled
in our sneaker treads, warm like baby mammals
in the folds of their mothers in the wild
being photographed by biologists from England.

Everything is constructed with a purpose, even
tiny balls of discarded gum, discarded
by the not-so-careless fingers. And most of it
cannot stand up to rain. Rain is created almost
everywhere. The way it lands on the face, the way
it follows the unseen tear-grooves in the cheeks
and eventually makes its way to the ground to pool
does not, in the grand scheme, matter very much.
Seriously, there is no god.

Strange to think that sweat and saliva
have a part to play, but they actually do.
How is it sunny when the shadows don't rustle
us from sleep? The sleeping body does not know
the weather, trapped in the perpetual keel-haul
of the oxygen-free subconscious. Rain will never
enter into the mind's convoluted understanding
of rain. Scientists and doctors are currently
and have for some time been studying the purpose
of sleep, but in a way the mind will never know
the effects of, say, a tornado or rainbow. Might
be easier to explain illusions to the blind.

If there was a god, I'm not sure he would really
care about the weather's effects. Or me. Sleep
is difficult to come by in the presence of storms.
That is one reason why I stopped creating them. That,
and my own misunderstanding of time. I used to feel
there would always be time for this or that, but certain
thises or thats will never come again, and this
upsets me very much when, in the shadow provided
by my window shade, I try with a palpable effort
to return to the one place I can and by turns cannot
control the weather, landscape and changing cast
of characters which is, in case it's not obvious,
where I would rather be right now.