Rain Days Poem by Rovert Nworb

Hated days of inanimate beauty,
serpentine drunkenness clouding all soul and emotion
I wish more than anything,
Wish for guts, wish for glory
The gray afternoon is pulsating in my forehead
reminding me of the lives I've let go
She and I dream watercolor fantasies
Separated but neither lonely in our abstract collectiveness

The rain outside has put my soul in a sick mood
I lay in the shadows of eternity basking in the echoes
of the age-old jazz of my country's long forgotten past
I wish for the dreary afternoon of my future,
Walking along the melancholy weather's wet sand beside
a still lake,
Feet smooshing imprints of me, and I taking
in my toes grains of rough waterside earth
I strip my clothes off so that I am naked with myself,
nothing I dare hide from, nothing I cannot confront
I step into the still water and dive across the ripples,
I feel every dropp of it in every corner of my flesh,
Cold, but in such freedom as to feel embraced by
the ancient lullabies of a far off universe

I crawl out of my exposing cacoon and back into
my clothes, my secrecy, my hidingplace
Wandering through the forests, dripping branches and
rustling limp leaves,
Until I come to a city of lost dreams,
Empty and gray
With silent transparent zombielike humans walking
robotically to their destinations, be them places of
life or death or taxes
I sit in the window of a shop, amongst the people
who contemplate reality behind their kind eyes
I sip my drink and warmth absorbs the corpselike
feeling from my bones through my chest
Waiting, listening to a cheap radio from the
ceiling, watch the street splashes fall from their
moments of truth,
Forever passed by lonely faces obscured by
anonymous umbrellas

I drag my weary legs through the back door
Down the slick pavement toward American neon
I climb to the rooftops of a building that
looks in need of a companion to keep intact
Scaling its walls and standing atop it, conquering
Watching my city, the light distorted between
drops of sober rain,
And I lay beneath the sky on the roof and I
close my eyes
The drops of water plummeting toward me, trying
to tear me down, giving me a beating I like to deserve
And I take it because it feels like justice
Justice I couldn't have prevented and have been
inevitably entitled to
Enigmatically

I watch the raindrops fall down to me from heaven
A heaven of gloom and silence, but peaceful
A slow, wise joy that only age can bring
The steam of life in this world discarded
Morality forgotten in favor of what small comforts bring
Unconcious gluttony

I climb down from my wordly lookout so close to
the sky
Back into the puddled alleyways where sleepers in
newspaper dream of a past life of progress and profit
And I pity their dirty shoes, among a world that
disreguards them and cares not for their hope
or happiness

Walking through the troubled airs of the street
Along the buildings that glare down on me
They beg me, beg, for merciful torture
For fire and flames and a pile of ash
that they've dreamed of since their efforts
to hold were ignored
By the very creatures they fought to stand for

Down a driveway, into the bleak internal sunlight
which appears as a ray within me,
Though it lasts only as long as I don't think of it
Hereupon home

Home to my joy
My life
My love
She waits in solemn contentment
I slip into our cozy den
With only the light of a fire burning beside a rocking
chair and a sentimental book
Sip from another warm cup and feel strength being
replenished in the walls of my body
Stand and step across the squeeky boards toward a
soft bed
Slide out of my wet, dirty clothes and find ones that
warm my flesh and tingle as they brush the hairs of
my arms
And crawl up into the bed, beneath the sweet covers
and Into faithful arms.