for Becky, Martha, & Ev

           “When it rains, it pours.”

how am I supposed to feel?—sad’s not the half of it; sad only starts the laughter

at losers’ games, like the grammar check zigzagging on when you’re writing poems;

like a comicbook guy in a rainstorm, wordless, soaking, perpetual, miserable,

from panels in graphic novels you read after surgery leaves you mindless,

which make you stop nevertheless, for a moment, to stare in admiration

at penwork becoming such metaphor for torment from weather and God:

and this is the weather we stand in, since we’ve evolved just beyond our orbits

so we can reach that moon, say, once or twice before falling back

into the junkyard of centuries repeating the same old lessons:

birth, copulation, death, and you have to eat something to stay alive.

wouldn’t we be better off if we all were music, or listening to music, or playing

it all the time, on our little drums;  or if we were ink on paper, so that these

abominable black slashes meant something else, in addition to catching a

cold in precipitation?—meant, for example, more story, more sympathy, pathos

like heaven’s glory, catching the eye of a minor deity able to make us happy?

we’re not freezing the moment the monsoon hits as the global climate changes:

that chatter’s less dental than mental, anticipatory, underground.

it’s our oracle’s murmur, rehearsing so much of the past that it sounds like future;

putting our ears to earth, we imagine she’s saying, “I want to die,”

but no: that’s “I want to diet,”  “I want today.” she needs a movie.

she needs a better dream.  she needs a clue;  she needs an inkling.  isn’t there,

in this rainstorm, some dark line that she can use?  look here: take the streams

of this Eisnershpritz into your arms: it’s a black-sheep shearing.

wash it, tease it, card it: it will spin.  you can weave a coat. you can felt it:

you’ll need a hat, too, girl: it’s raining.