Cyril Darkcloud

Wind, its very essence is to move – the freest of all that is free, moving where and when it will. With the very first breath of birth life drinks the freedom of wind. The name that has been so recently torn from him was given at the moment his lungs first filled with the free and moving air of the wind. One does not control the wind, one enters it, feels its freedom and moves. He breathes deeply filling his lungs with the harsh and bitter Wind that has scattered and dispersed his name and his past and borne him to these lands where life is lived far from the skies. He turns his face upward and his eyes move across the darkened heavens until they find the Great Nomad, the one who wanders and is never lost. Filling his eyes with its light, he sits on the stone ledge of the mountainside and thinks of the child whose eyes he promised he would meet at this star. After some time, he removes the locket from around his neck, opens it and prays silently over the smiling face of she who will again be his daughter. Tears well up within his eyes but do not fall and he looks upward once more, his eyes reaching out through unshed tears for the Nomad’s light. To be exiled, to move within the currents of a Wind terrible in its freedom, to be a man without even the consolation of the name of one’s youth – sterner indeed even than death is the love that has made this choice. He rises, the moisture in his eyes borne away by the swiftly moving air, and steps off of the ledge. No, one does not control the wind – one enters it, feels its freedom and moves. More to follow .....

Burying Hawkie Snyder We buried Hawkie Snyder yesterday. Put him in a muddy hole next to some old preacher's grave. Carried him in a brownish box -- the damn thing weighed a ton. The handles were brass and wet with rain and slippery in my hands. My shoulders ached from carrying it, Hawkie weren't no little man. Of course it rained, it always does. But this was not some gentle rain, a rain just barely hard enough to get your pant legs damp and give a little extra bother without any extra pain while it picks up some poor sinner and takes him through the Pearly Gates. No, this here rain was different. It came down in slams and angry streaks and slapped all the mourners in the face and made them drop some extra tears. The rain was hard, but we all came -- dying's serious stuff around here. We all came and stood around in dark blue suits and overcoats, black dresses and them little hats with veils, and watched the reverend sprinkle holy water that got swallowed by the rain and tried to hear the prayers he said and not to look each other in the face. His wife set a couple roses and a couple tears upon the box before they sunk it in the ground. His boys each threw a spade of dirt and maybe choked, "Good-bye." Then they all headed for the cars and me, I stuck around to say good-bye to the dead folks in the crowd.

Conflicted. Conflicted and confused. Conflicted. Caught between the poles of the geothermal considerations underlying tectonic shifting of plates and the clearly compelling character of a creature first found dwelling in an arcade. Conflicted. Conflicted and confused. Conflicted and considering the possibility that the key may lie with another arcade creature made of colorful pixels and called Donkey Kong. Edited by: Cyril Darkcloud at: 4/30/02 8:37:37 pm

(Conversion Confusion, this is the post that started it all off) Me and Her Me and her, we've been saying words of parting to each other since the minute we first met. That's how close we are. Me and her, we felt the moisture from the urgent splashing near the bottom of each other's eyes and folded up our smiles. That's how close we are. Me and her, we heard the hunger kicking in the silence in between our words and our opened mouths forgot to speak. That's how close we are. Me and her, we felt our bodies get in the way when our spirits tried to touch, and so we each let go of the other's hand and knelt to pray. That's how close we are.

First words so often are distant words -- words plucked with haste from the seams of life, the stammering edges of event and feeling that do not quite meet in thought -- reluctant harvest of the separation of life from self and life from life, and the unprotected heralds of cities whose location only further speaking might disclose. My apologies for not having sooner expressed my gratitude for the very kind words and the welcome with which my application was received. Your first words to me have certainly made it much easier to begin getting to know the members of the community elsewhere on the boards. Once again, my thanks.

I have read words that have left in my mind imprinted pictures of places and times and faces and voices painted with colors of rhyme. I have read words that have opened my eyes to the seeing of mystery in the mundane of life and the brightness of suns shining within other skies. I have read the words of this poem with a smile remembering the feel of the touch on my mind of actions and notions I did not see first with my eyes. A very fine piece of work, Ozymandius. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

There is an intriguing sructural dimension to the poem: Stanza 1 * Silence - which is in its own way an absence of movement. No sound vibrates within the air, for example. * Life is portrayed as slipping away rather being expressively lived. Stanza 2 * Time moves past the narrator rather than the narrator moving in time. Stanza 3 * Sound which is a form of movement [see above]. * Life is being expressively lived away from the place of silence. Stanza 4 * There is an imperative to move perceived by the narrator. * This imperative identifies the narrator as one painfully poised between silence and sound, stillness and movement. Final Stanza * It was the expressive living of love [sound] that let to the numbing stillness of loss [silence] and it is difficult to risk sound only to possibly fall back once more into silence. Nice job. Edited by: Cyril Darkcloud at: 4/20/02 9:55:35 am

* Picks up phone, dials and orders pizza. * * Hangs up. * * Changes mind. * * Picks up phone, dials and orders more pizza. * * Asks for extra peppers. * * Hangs up. * * Waits for pizza delivery. * Fun poem.

Far too seldom I chance to read a bit of verse that speaks to me as this one did. Very nice work, Justin. Edited by: Cyril Darkcloud at: 4/9/02 7:47:40 am

Davey's Pool Mom says Davey Sanders was just about my age when he jumped into this pool and he had red hair and a cowlick and a horn that set the dogs to barking when he rode his bike to school. She says this pool ain't got no bottom, at least none that no one ever found and that when Davey held his breath and ducked his head they never fished him out. She don't like me coming up here to the strippings and sitting on this rock and sticking my feet into this pool and staying here alone. But I come up here when she's working in the mill on Tuesday afternoons. There's a bunch of rocks on that bank above the old coal road and it takes sixteen puffs to climb them and then I'm in the elderberry bushes and the laurel and the birch trees growing near the pits where the old guys used to dig for coal and then it's past the rabbit hole and I'm here at Davey's Pool and my shoes are off and my feet are wet and I'm sitting on this rock and I whistle 'til the wind gets still and then I listen hard 'cuz I think sometimes the air says most when the wind's hardly moving at all and the sounds that it makes itch in my ears while it muffles the chirping and songs of afternoon birds and leaves a trace of a ripple under the leaves floating in Davey's Pool. Edited by: Cyril Darkcloud at: 4/23/02 4:22:19 pm

This is one of the most enjoyable reads I have had in quite some time.

A poem a dance of words upon a page left by your hand before my eyes. Your words and the feelings they invoke as my eyes move through their dance. A touch upon my own thoughts left by your hand and its dance of words. Very nicely done, Annael.

Nothing Came Between Us I see my image in your eyes. I look so far away. I feel the need to cup my hands in a cone around my mouth, breathe deeply in, collect my voice and shout. But I seem so far away the words will just get lost, lose their breath and fall away somewhere in between. No sound to hear. No echo to return. We sit so close, not far apart at all. I could stretch my fingers out across the empty space and rest them on your arm. But I see my image in your eyes and I look so far away.