Repeat after me,

you are only a miserable sod.

It was words that I knew to be false,

miserable,

unhappy perhaps, certainly cheerless

in some cases, wretched,

low, as overcast as leaden sky

and the darkness of a thunderstorm

waiting to rage…

but even in that thunderstorm

must come surely

lightning, the illumination

of a flood of ideas, the mania

of hopeful praise and the sense

that the brief encounter

with electric vibration may last

long enough to kick start the heart

into love once more.

I will take your miserable,

and show you a raging thunderstorm

into which your parrot voice hides

in fear, I will shove your miserable

where the sun don’t shine

but where the lightning,

no matter how brief,

fills the landscape

and with such devastating emotion.

 

Ian D. Hall 2017