go to the next part of Storm
I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He
has not created me for naught. I shall do good. I shall do his work. I
shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place.
--Cardinal Newman
******
I love storms.
In this branching of the river there are many storms, and I walk among them. Potent. My wings of obsidian and iron crash together and there is thunder. Let there be thunder. I rub my flint wings against my steel hair and there is lightning. Let there be lightning. The wind from my rushing fills the earth, the rain-slicked trees heaving against my bosom, the taut air, electric against my face, plunges her fiery tongue inside my mouth and I...suck and bite and there is rain. Let there be rain.
I really get off on storms.
Lately I've been walking the storms. I'm not sure why. For the experience, I guess. My jeans, rain-tightened against my thighs, my feet, dry within leather boots. Walkin' boots. I stalk the storm, letting the rain wash over me, willing the rain-sheeted violence to strike. My hair, long, to my waist, floating over my naked shoulders, whipping with a wind of its own. I rarely wear a shirt, when I walk the storms, I like the play of lightning and shadow along my stomach, the cool water pooling at my navel, running down my pants.
I do all my best work in storms.
Next I saw an angel standing on the sun. He cried out in a loud
voice to all the birds flying in midheaven: Come! Gather together for the
great feast that God has prepared for you! You are to eat the flesh of
kings, of commanders and warriors, of horses and their riders; the flesh
of all men, the free and the slave, the small and the great.
--Chapter 19, Verse 5: Destruction of Pagan Nations, The Book of Revelation
On the prairie, you can see a storm coming from a long way off. It rolls across the sky, filling the empty spaces. Like blood from a serious wound seeping into a gauze bandage. Like spilled ink soaking the porous page.
On the prairie, I can walk for a long time and nobody will notice. Used to be, when I passed, the Pharaohs themselves would quiver, entertaining notions of the death of their first-born. Now, a woman spots me in the glare of her rain-soaked headlights, and her eyes linger. I am wet, but not cold. I am steaming slightly, and my jeans might as well be made of the skin of my wings. My destruction fills her gaze. She swerves to get nearer, in any way she can. As her Volvo draws nigh, she is likely to run me over, so much does she want me. The slight curve of the road is misplayed, in the deafening sheets of rain. Her car slides, and all the vaunted safety features of this safe, boxy European make, go red-light, fail-safe.
There's a skittering, a jump, a mad rush and a shock of cold in the 10 foot farmer's drainage pond. The car is upside down, with water draining in fast. It's a slow, cold, delicious, deserved death.
It's just not the same anymore.
I love storms, but they're about all I have anymore.
Abstaining from speech marks him who is obeying the spontaneity
of his nature. A violent wind does not last for a whole morning; a sudden
rain does not last for the whole day. To whom is it that these (two) things
are owing? To Heaven and Earth. If Heaven and Earth cannot make such (spasmodic)
actings last long, how much less can man!
--THE TAO AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS, Lao-Tse
I heard her calling me over the sound of thunder and lightning, over the depths of the towering clouds and through the dense, unforgiving night, I heard her. Over the booming of my voice, the crashing of my lightning, I heard her crying out to me. I had to go.
Her pain cried out for me, filling me, delighting me. She lay there cowering in her house on the prairie. I laughed as the storm blew past me. strong...forceful. She cries, calling me to the ritual, the magic. Asking for me to participate in her great pain, in her long, loving, pain. I crash together my wings, of wood, and metal, of hair and bone. She wants me so badly, she doesn't even know how much I love her, how much I can give her, how I can fill her, fulfill her, fill her, give it to her.
She's in the corner.
copyright 1995 by David Micko
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