storm on my birthday

toward evening the skulls of dusty crowns become quite sunken
and the cyanotic summer is finally threading the catheter of storm —

cards, envelopes with cash are soaked in the arrowy
blood, celebratory foil is tied up with lightnings,

green ghosts are munching the trombones, red
sprites are bursting, humping in a giant tuba —

happy birthday, slush, happy birthday, deluge, happy
birthday, the lizardy ruffled shirts of jamming umbrellas,

and to you, taxi drivers caught in traffic, and to that
'hit fm' of yours, suddenly broadcasting the mating

call of melusinas and the grumble of salamanders, and to
you, puzzled dogs-wandereres, and to you, nomad cats,

and to you, something black over a loose brezhnevka,
and to you, something blue in the thunder’s hypoglossal fold,

someone is trembling and crawling under the sandbox mushroom
canopy, rage of south, jest of north, greetings, happy birthday to me;

cause there’s one thing i love more than life — electric shock,
cause there’s one thing i love more than death — getting wet.

storm in childhood

in childhood the double glazing is thicker,
the boots are rubberier — that’s for not
being scared, when the storm is

tossing in her stall, opening her
cloak, showing the fulgirite
scepter through the bushes;

the insects are wearing armor against
the rain: a firefly zeppelin is spitting
a little on the chinches' tractors,

the worms are the size of a dragon from
a scary book, the books are the size of a
pioneers' palace, and the palace itself is the

size of a pin head, snap your fingers and
shake it off into a puddle… in the funnel’s mouth
the lightning’s a frog’s tongue, sticking to

the boys next door, the salivary glands are
like air mattresses, and here you go —
the apple core rain, the sewing machine

coil rain, that’s the coils which used
to live in a cookie tin, the band-
aid rain, the rubber duck rain,

the sega pixel rain,
the tire swans rain,
the sail underwear rain,

and in the summer house’s rags, half-black
from the soil, the fakir moon is settling
in her aftersunset makeshift hammock,

clicking her tongue, searchingly staring: she
knows something, but pretends that she doesn’t,
yeah, she’s not like other adults.

storm in a herbarium

like candies sucked to the core, the storm is resting
'tween the magic not-alive-anymore pictures,
and chewing the bravest, kissing slobbery the
glibbest, poking the noses of the wildest;

one geographically impossible merry band: canadian
horseweed, common birdweed, parrot feather
watermilfoil, salt grass, pampas grass, and
just basic grass, which is called agrostis by

scientists, big-thorn milkvetch, sicklepod
milkvetch, vaginal milkvetch, surprising
milkvetch, also known as pseudotartar,
milkvetch, wonderful cup milkvetch, frigid

milkvetch and others — all tingling, shrinking into the
album sheet, with falling fire and flying water in their
teeth, and when the weather breaks, some wondrous
flowers will step out of a school handicraft:

supreme thunderflower, herbal rainbow, seven-
beam dynamite ivy, graveyard moonleaf,
zoomer millet, cachegrass, explosive sweet
flag, deleuze’s hogweed, blind cop buttercup,

beautiful as radiation, as a new pencil box, as a
slap in your face, as a doodlebug’s mouth, as a whistle,
as a shaving cut on your pubic zone, as an animatronic,
as a wicker basket, as sisterhood, as holy-fucking-hell,

tickets to squat the world will get these chimerical plants
into the front gardens, and from now no idle weed, dumb-
founded by watering, will make a sound: 'ah, what a nation
we had in the bloodgathering night, before the storm! '

storm at noon

          to those with double 'a' in their names

for the air it does not do to be listless and weak,
like double 'a' in the word 'apathy',
and the swoon is sucking the ice with a straw —
it’s not at all like a skinned fruit of the
lightning served for high tea, or the

storm, for example, over the capital of
tuberculosis, where we used to hit early mercury
rev and slide from the switchback into the
abyss, or not to slide, but to fly in a
glittering car over the hooch sea

waving a pirate flag… or simply to
nest on the highest of the cliffs and
use it to tint the lips of the storm,
hoary, chomping, covered in bloody feather,
like double 'a' in the word 'angelophag'.

and then everything was ending, and we were
drinking the bubbly, or pure syrup, or not even
drinking, but laying with the sun at our guts,
like the antiheroes of asphalt, for sexless worms
to envy, to the purring of atmospheric ghosts.

storm at midnight

she might be not heavy at all, might
not be scary, but she’s trying her best:
on air-cons the skeletons are sitting,
dangling their legs, with sunflower
eyes, and bawling out serenades for
the wet sleepless hedgehogs, the storm

is the queen of the hang, the grunge band of
cicadas is sent on vacation, treat yourself
with half a glass of the midnight, you passerby
with a face like a nō-men! july with his ass kicked,
without stockings, is vomiting to the storm drain,
his clown nose is shifted to look like a

third eye; at midnight the weather
becomes politics — so it was worth
for you to take a barefoot promenade here,
through the big-lipped moon reflections,
where else you’d get liquid from the
feverish erinyes' foreheads poured for free?

storm in the closet

only for those who cannot live without closed-up
places, the diggings of loneliness, the mines of hush,
like a children’s den, empty in the evenings,
used for playing durak after a football match,
or a teachers' restroom, where there’s no admittance to
outsiders, a voting booth, a night tram, a single
cell, a safe deposit box, a euthanasia capsule,

for you we’ve got an exclusive product — the storm in the
closet: a built-in cloud under the dome of never worn
dresses, some ankle deep mud on the shoe shelf, the
lightning every twenty-nine seconds only to know that
your wet hair is blindfolding you, chill down your spine,
shiver from thunder, cheeks going red after your t-shirt
is wet are guaranteed, umbrellas, raincoats, hoods — not

included; turn it on — and sit to the sound of a mournful
accordion (who the hell knows how to cut the music),
something is reaching out, shaking the door, and it’s as though
the clouds’ vomit had flooded the whole hallway long ago,
and little electric devils were rafting in paper boats,
and then you come out — and no one is there in the house,
you blow off the dust from the mirror and dry yourself off, you moron.

storm one last time

storm, you’ve killed and buried me, and i still keep
your childhood pictures in old-school oval frames…
the lips are sealed — no gossip about such a love,
no prattling about such a rage — understar
arrows are hitting the thin meniscus of a town-
on-the-hill, drainpipe gargoyles are picking
their teeth with flutes, under the cover of the celestial
bender a half-wit medium is walking barefoot…

the moon dwellers are airdropping him pics of a hip-dip
puddle near the bay of rainbows on the basalt knolls,
the cheshire cat is streaming from wonderland, spinning
on the lightning like on a pylon, stripping to his smile,
by the school’s chain-link fence he almost has been hit
by a car, but it has never struck him — he’s too busy
checking the pokédex, calling the krypton just to ask
what’s up; having borrowed an umbrella from a stranger girl,

he’s poking the sky’s nail three times — and while the
disaster is reigning here, clanking the chains of forecasts,
the moon, the water, the grass — little samples of them
are stowed in matchboxes: everything is in its place,
the garage is cut in half — well, let it be; the storm in her
violet jammies (violet is the new black) is shelling both
of us like sunflower seeds, and we’re just cool with it,
every time — like a feast, every time — like the last time.