The first fulguration stooped to kiss a shard,
Not the thunderhead that boasted of its flame;
A broken bottle in an orchard yard
Held one white filament no night could claim.
The beech unlocked a thousand argent leaves;
Each fern leaned nearer, listening through the rain.
A kestrel loosed the wind from both its wings;
The granite seemed to soften in the plain.
Then lightning missed the heavens altogether.
It entered quartz, wet lichen, antler, thorn;
The river halted underneath its weather,
While moss recalled a coastline never born.
An oak drew brightness downward through its roots.
The fox stood still beneath a hawthorn's breath.
One acorn opened, showing not its fruit,
But rings of summers harvested from death.
When morning searched the hills, the sky was gone.
The birds flew lower, as though nothing changed.
Only the broken glass kept filling with the dawn—
Until the sun looked in, and turned away.
Written: June 11, 2026, for a contest sponsored by Charles Messina
*******************
The Stoner
I was sitting on the corner, stoned
When out of the blue, my dead aunt phoned
How could this be, she rests in peace
Right beside my loving niece
I answered the phone, and my auntie said
"I know you think that I am dead"
"I'm alive"- my auntie moaned
Or- could it be that you're just- "Stoned"
******************************************************
In a thunderhead, she floated, frail as smoke,
"Grandpa's humor struck like lightning's stroke,"
Thru the tangled wire, heaven rose, vast and deep,
"While restless angels stole the sleep I used to keep."
Then lightning struck along the wire,
my heart ignited, ablaze in fire.
She whispered, "that is only your brain,
tumbling wildly in the acid rain."
A single, white thunderhead
tainted slightly, with the pink-shine
of a late sun coughs
lazily in the vast grayness
of an elegant sea,
somewhere—
a sea still asleep.
Greedy cries of gulls
fill the saltiness of the heavy air
and through the early mist
people of the day appear
in straw hats and red and green covers.
The night-crowded streets,
baked and earthy,
move on among carts
and fresh purple blossoms
and over-ripe fruit from the sea,
to and endless sand-scape.
Staggered and restless,
the ocean-lights appear,
and a warning from the sky
floods and nourishes
the clay walls of an empty palace.
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
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
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
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 ©
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.
thunderhead clouds threatening monsoon rains
AP: Honorable Mention 2025
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
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
#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
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
cloud born illusions
flash in summer’s thunderhead
melt in winter’s sun
Brian Johnston
January 1, 2016
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
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