A Tide, A Storm Poem by Joshua Bantum

It’s not quite the same,
The weather?
Maybe,
People?
Probably.
But everything inside me has
Fallen to an ancient twist,
It’s the cliché in love stories
That we’re all sick of,
And I tell you,
It’s just as bad in the
middle,
Than watching from the
Outside.
Destroying your physical possessions and casting
Your future into a distorted
Chaos.

Eventually this twist will
Curl me up and tare
My bones and veins
Apart.
I must slide through the slits
Of her eyes
And disappear from her radiant
Disaster….

But I enjoy the dusted smoke
She hides herself in.
The tortured struggle we’re
Involved with,
So perhaps I should just embrace,
But in the past
The second I do,
The clouds compress
Rain becoming reluctant,
And your clear existence fades out,
Becoming unrecognized,
Like paint smeared,
And all that’s left are your damaging memories
Of ecstasy and pain,
A trail of shattered picture frames
Scatter in houses we built,
Now left in broken rubble behind your path
sitting like images trying
To be remembered
After a dream.

But now I’ll sit
Or travel,
Looking again
For the next storm.