Poem by Ronald Palmer in Shampoo Issue 15

Bell Dings (the voice of the ring master):

A cloud of hysterical sparrows: swarming ashes over the highway. The fogged entrance

to the planting site smelled of fresh earth. Everyone was bending with fistfuls of thunder

and raking thunder into the recently overturned rich black earth. The swarming sparrows

shifted straight up through three parallel wires: arced the circumference of the Danbury

Fair Mall. Swarming sparrows in the shape of thunder gliding like a school of black fish

above the swans calmly gliding on a small swamp near Sears. The entire school of

sparrows freeze-funneling into various shapes: a computer screen: a flying black

hammer: a country made of frantic black wings: finally dropping down into cattails

behind The Christmas Tree Shop. The body is a thousand dark wings: thunderlogic sings

in a vibrating vibrato: stinging with thunder’s yearning: sparrows mimicking an

emotional tornado chaotically sketching a cathedral inside the body of thunder. My

sustained effort toward moaning simulates the mood that swelled in me as I sat swollen

on the side of the Dutch highway: fresh with suffering: after falling drunk from my bike

under the absurd and taunting moon made from leftover thunder. Ideas take the place of

sorrows. My own mental space has evolved a ghetto of grief like the black hole

widening in the center of our Milky Way. Thunder:sigh. Stumble from your sick

academy of silences with nothing to read but the sky.

Bell Dings (the voice of the ring master):

Boxer of thunder: arms a glow. A thousand small strokes: wing:licking his

braided body: hunched: taut: vibrating with yearning. Thunder flung two gold keys

into the thirty-six-year-old pine tree next to the white mailbox. And you honestly

believe: And you honestly believe? Now show each viewer with a thunder:quiver

standing in the chilly Met: viewing from below the lean arms of boxer-model Billy

Smith: shoulder-locked and balancing on two ring-ropes. We see how a solid blow to the

ego grows like thunder skid-thudding across the sky: thunder’s memory jab opens a

beautiful pink slit above the left brow: then a slow thunder growls between two smeared

clouds: spreading an eerie vibration: two hundred souls simultaneously opening into

sound. (It is important not to inflate the life vest inside the aircraft). Thunder refuses to

release a serious snow of forgiveness. Thunder’s farce will continue due to the refusal to

release the news: light theory meets the misconstrued meaning of sound. I’m descending

from a crowd of formlessness: digging for meaning underground. Thunder’s arms poised

in a stance of perpetual agitated stabbing: disguised as a fleshy invitation. Thunder left

no trace of Frost and Rothko: ivory and orange over gray: (Thunder is still wandering

through the fogged entrance: were they marking baby gravestones or planting pear trees?

with fistfuls of black earth): nothing bold can stay. Within thunder’s lucid dream: the

father was infantile and nursing on the body of the dreamer. Forgive me thunder: I

simply know not how to sustain my cry. Stumble from your sick academy of silences

with nothing to read but the sky.

Bell Dings (the voice of the ring master):

Capture thunder’s only son: wrap him in a cloud of lies: told on both sides of the no-fly

zone: add a silver gun sliding and re-sliding across thunder’s dangerous tongue. O young

and pleasurable one! Echologics! Thunder’s brother’s breath fills the mouth: keeps

descending into the mouth of thunder’s darkness: a fist of breath inviting thunder’s

impossible forgiveness. How does thunder proceed now that: “reports tell of the recent

suicide bomber stood next to the bus driver when…” the crow swooped over the

highway onto the opened deer: I was thunder behind the wheel: speeding like an ongoing

argument: with thunder’s nature:nurture:logic brooding in the mind-sac well into my late

thirties: (thunderlogic gathers like testosterone shots on the upper right corner of each

ass cheek): bitter:thunder’s bloody swab dropped into pink toilet water. Thunder’s

political dust settles between FBI ears: (O yes: I completely agree: thunder’s best work

in years). Thunder’s religious dogma disguised as economy smeared in blood on the side

of thunder’s most recent burnt bus. Keep sewing a mild elation into the folds of thunder:

raining into grain: a pink combustible crack above tortured landscape’s view: thunder

always wants to become you. (Whispering: thunder always wants to become you.)

Thunder ends with a quick and awkward train-station goodbye. Stumble from your sick

academy of silences with nothing to read but the sky.

Bell Dings (the voice of the ring master):

Thunder’s hyperbolic pun: formlessness tears through each accidental moment:

rearranging internal patterns of flight: two male cardinals criss-cross between my lungs.

The planes entered from opposite directions and then thunder held us all frozen: staring

at both metal mouths on fire. Beyond thunder’s site of comic book evil: this event

continues to cascade in riotous disagreement like two sons: returning to thunder:dust:

while Daddy Carlyle’s still clean: but thunder’s never just what thunder seems.

Thunder’s high maintenance clean up crew sickened with sifting outside thunder’s

silkroom and under the crushed tunnel in which 10 years of candles burn between us:

And you honestly believe you’re the only one: feeding on that thunder? Allow yourself

to be involved in thunder’s release: handing out Polaroids of thunder on the corner of

34th and Lex: everything’s vex: including thunder’s scarification: I’m tired of men who

want to sew my lips with thunder’s milk. I aborted thunder’s tempered stampede: seven-

tenths the speed of sound: thunder’s gone under ground. O mother of thunder: keep

wandering: keep stumbling like a drunk from thunder’s barroom sailor brawl: yes yes:

my my: stumble from your sick academy of silences with nothing to read but the sky.

Bell Rings (the voice of the ring master):

Thundermirror! Nature:nurture’s sedate thy thunderous moment of eat-thy-wafer: look

who’s doing the yawn-talk thing: everywhere I hear a cell phone ring: even ankle deep

in greenish bay: I wake to feel the scent of debt not pay: (nothing sold can stay!):

salivating in the realm of suture: financial terror’s fasting for truth or presenting thyself

as everlasting. Why think of CEO as hoarder when: imbecilic president approves mass

murder. Put the red sticker on that spoiled pig. He’s thunder:sick without a son: thunder

trans: cends lightning on the continuum of punctum. Wrap him in a fisted cloud of his

father’s last breath: drag him from town to town: country to country: injecting thunder’s

farce into the heart of every man. O tender father of thunder: offer your wife as a lie:

stumble from your sick academy of silences with nothing to read but the sky.

Thunder: \Thun"der\, v. t. To emit with noise and terror; to utter vehemently; to
publish, as a threat or denunciation.

Oracles severe Were daily thundered in our general's ear. --Dryden.

An archdeacon, as being a prelate, may thunder out an ecclesiastical censure. --
Ayliffe.

Thunder n 1: a deep prolonged loud noise [syn: boom </search?q=boom>, roar
</search?q=roar>, roaring </search?q=roaring>]

2: a booming or crashing noise caused by air expanding along the path of a bolt of
lightning v 1: move fast, noisily, and heavily; "The bus thundered down the road"
2: utter words loudly and forcefully; "'Get out of here,' he roared." [syn: roar

</search?q=roar>] 3: be the case that thunder is being heard [syn: boom

</search?q=boom>] 4: to make or produce a loud noise; "The river thundered
below"; "The engine roared as the driver pushed the car to full throttle."

Thunder often referred to in Scripture (Job 40:9; Ps. 77:18; 104:7). James and
John were called by our Lord "sons of thunder" (Mark 3:17). In Job 39:19, instead
of "thunder," as in the Authorized Version, the Revised Version translates
(ra'amah) by "quivering main" (marg., "shaking"). Thunder accompanied the
giving of the law at Sinai (Ex. 19:16). It was regarded as the voice of God (Job 37:2;
Ps. 18:13; 81:7; comp. John 12:29). In answer to Samuel's prayer (1 Sam. 12:17,
18), God sent thunder, and "all the people greatly feared," for at such a season (the
wheat-harvest) thunder and rain were almost unknown in Palestine.

Source </search?q=00-database-info&db=easton>: Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary.