Thunderhead Poems

Sandy

Blasting through the night
Blaze to morn
"Hey there Thunderhead!
Where you going with that storm?"

"To crazy eights!
And jesters wild
I’ll just be gone a while
Or more"

A frenzy in her mind
Fixed rage to rhyme
Don’t waste my time!
She says for hours
Words twirl through
The curly wire

There was wreck down deep inside
Beyond the bounds of mercy
Well lay down Sandy. Lay down
'Cause more people love you than baby birds

You’re a lucky mess I’ll tell you
Are you an angel or a bomb?
You made a liar out of me
You proved me wrong

Now a year has passed and gone
Tell me will you slow down and fall?
You’re gonna raze my faith
And I don’t wanna mind
I wish I didn’t mind at all

Yearning

An impossible love, too gentle to touch
A night-blossoming jewel, a rose-golden blush
A yearning surpassing the passions of man
A chasm of longing too deadly to span

Songs made of laughter, poems of tears
An echo remaining from previous years
Whispering fables to satisfy dreams
Unraveling slowly the world at its seams

Brilliant dust from a butterfly’s wings
Transcendent and lovely, dawn’s evening
A language forgotten and rusted by time
Scars crossing a sky untarnished by grime

Hope is the sunrise, a frantic race eastward
Spinning to a sunset, a plea sent skyward
Night billows out, a thunderhead over us
I am abandoned with fictions of what almost was

Jordie Spotting

He passes through the room like a bubble in champagne, unattached, teflon coated, and somehow freer than the rest of us. “Jordies here,” Leong says in an excited whisper.

“Yeah,” I sigh, adjusting my mask, “saw him.” She smiles like a cat behind hers. Leong knows I’m crushing on Jordie and she finds it delicious information which she waves at me like a flag whenever he’s around. 

We’re processing in, distancing and passing table to table. Leong can be with me because, as roommates, we’ll be quarantining together. Lisa joins us, she’s back from the restroom. “Jordies here,” she says, bouncing up on her toes to better scan the room.

I don’t look at him but he fills my horizon like a thunderhead. He’s all I can see, even when I’m not looking at him. We reach the end of a row of tables and bam, there he is, six feet away. He says hi, I say hi - I’m very professional as we exchange looping, harmless, euphemisms for settling in for spring semester - then he’s called to the next station.

“If only we weren’t so busy,” I say, holding this fiction in front of me like a shield. “Yeah,” Leong and Lisa say, practically together, and smiling like thieves.

Thunderstorm

Thunderstorm
a midnight lightning
My monsoon, I could not awaken
thunder, I could not forsaken
Thundery tintinnabulation tinkling

A sudden, sonic boom
The thundery thunderhead thundering
And the thunderstorms never stewing

I was thundering
Meteoroid's that is wandering
a cloudburst and yes it hums


And that moment my soul grew noisy
Suddenly, I heard some sleeting
there be more purely fleeting?

Rain deafening washout
Thunder
I have dreamed of the torrents
I saw the rains
Only this and a aftershock

I saw the thunderbolts
Suddenly, I heard hollering
But in the fact that it was growling

the laughing, lumbering lightening
And the winds never whistling
Of the light's that is brightening
What  there be more pure lightning?

I heard a windward, scintillating pounding
 the howling beating
A rumble torn
Thunderstorm


8/20/20
written words by James Edward Lee Sr. 2020 ©

High Summer

Thunder growled and prowled the leaden sky,
no sign of birds in trees, no bees nor butterfly.
High summer and the thrumming of rain on leaf,
the catatonic stillness and quietude only brief.
A crackle of jagged light excites and splits the sky asunder,
followed by a murmur then a crescendo of rolling thunder.
The rain applauds with hordes of watery droplets,
that hiss and sizzle in the clammy air like rhyming couplets.
A moments grace as clouds race and build to thunderhead,
then the moiling, broiling vapour ignites and crashes overhead.
The brooding skies lighten as the heavenly orchestra perform,
diminuendo, percussion and birdsong the ending of the storm.

Monsoon

monsoon rains
their thunderhead clouds
~ drama overhead



posted on April 21, 2019

How Are You Feeling Ii

How Are You Feeling? II

I feel purple.
As purple as a two day old bruise
As ominous as a purple thunderhead
As desolate as a starless purple sky
As out of sync 
As the unrhyming word itself
Purple!

Out Croppings and Droppings

Out Croppings and Droppings


After looking from all the out croppings
Discovered there were some Trump droppings
And if on you Thunderhead were to drop in
All of us hope he would never do it again.

Why is that thunder seems to make a clap
While Trump could care less or give a crap
After he constantly has been raising fuss
Fat, big and blustery like a blunderbuss.

By my wife's email again was stimulated
And to write another poem have contemplated
But being we are living so way down south
She took all the words right out of my mouth.

James Thesarious Hilarious Horn
Retired Veteran and Poet

Poetry In the Forecast

#1
thunderhead flashing
light fingers shape grey matter
artistic discharge

#2
grand canyons of sky
dark beauty inspiring awe
flood warnings likely

#3
mind changing winds now
volcanic lightning dances
truth still evolving

#4
beauty finds new rhymes
thunder authors new rhythms
all truth is of God

Brian Johnston
July 1, 2016

Future Shock

The future seems so hard at times
Although it’s answered prayer
Unfolding futures
Offer no previews,
Are innately mysterious
Have their own rhythm and perfume,
Always leave us guessing.
The future is like a developing cloud
That can build into a thunderhead
Complete with lighting flashes
Or color an evening sky 
With rainbow like diffractions of light
Calming jagged nerves.

Always a partner in marriage,
I await my bride at the alter of time,
Whether the music playing be ecstatic or a dirge
The organist has been paid,
The wedding guests have gathered
And many lives await our vows.

Do I love her? Good question!
Like a tsunami approaching the shore
She rushes landward,
As unstoppable as a tide,
How can man say no to lunar phases?
And the future also has its moods,
Blushing like a girl you just kissed,
Withdrawn like forgotten birthday.
But when she nestles in your arms
You can feel her softly purring,
Motor running, she belongs to you.


Brian Johnston
January 30, 2016

Haiku: Traditional 21

cloud born illusions
flash in summer’s thunderhead 
melt in winter’s sun 


Brian Johnston
January 1, 2016

Thunderhead

Thunderhead


Billowing blackness
towering over it’s prey
yellow eyes flashing
she deliberately licks
cold raindrops from trembling lips




3/31/2015

Submitted to Rick Parise - Tanka contest

The Oak In the Acorn

the acorn in the oak
bark bone fingers crusted brown
waving sinew, shedding sky
tap root summon’d deeply down

sighs like summer sound in rain
building up then down the shade
sunlight filters dappled beams
stormwinds wild up the glade

growth rings tell of time and fire
knots hold moments, seasons pass
thunderhead now roaring branches
whirlwind leaves in leaning grass

now black clouds spill heavy ink
first a smatter, soon much more
trunk soaked humid, lichen slick 
ozone bite, ionic pour

for a moment pause creation
flash the static, crash the drum
rock the heavens, cloak the sun
clouds bursting out electric thrum

flashing pulse and threading sap
plasma blaze down wooded stroke
crack the mighty, split the bole
greenfather fallen low and broke

spent the clouded day turns blue
as from a storm new days are born
and next to ragged roots and grounded trunk
the oak waits quiet in the acorn...

Intimidating

You
Rise, a
Thunderhead
Looming over
Me

The Storm

The Storm
                                 Frank Halliwell

The sultry day was near its end,
The cloying heat distressed.
The cool of evening getting near,
But still the air oppressed.

A mounting shadow from the west
Conceals the distant hills.
No breath of air disturbs the leaves,
The atmosphere is still.

The thunderhead obscures the light,
-A tower in the sky.
It roils and boils up high above,
'Tis plain a storm is nigh.

Then suddenly a burst of wind-
A breath of frigid air,
From deep within the giant cloud
The signal to beware!

A sudden flash, a crash of sound
Thor's hammer fills the night
The flares of lightning make the sky
A latticework of light.

Then lashing rain borne by the wind
That swirls the compass round.
The loud drum roll of thunder that
Now fills the world with sound.

Until at last it moves away,
Still grumbling as it fades.
The lights still flash within the cloud,
And distant cannonades.

But all the world has been reborn,
The air smells fresh at last.
The garden now can grow anew,
Now that the storm has passed.

                   o0o

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