La Nina steps in from the south,
infiltrating a cold undercurrent.
The streets spring up with water,
black tar rivers wantonly advance
through the concrete glass and steel man-made mountains.
I could smell it. The Rain.
I knew it would come.
I had closed all the windows,
smothered my bed with plastic
to keep the water, while I slept,
from making ponds in my eyes
and a deep lake in my mouth.
“You’re butterflyesque.” My sister commented,
As I talked to her from a payphone outside a QT
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“No matter how tornadic the storm
when it lets go of you,
you always land upon another flower.”
The storm raves outside, wakes me.
Flustered about the water I was taking in
through the roof of my home-made camper top,
I pull the plastic closer about me.
Why have I come here?
To this city?
This Babylon?
It terrifies me.
But I am here.
Here in the city of my birth.
Yet I have been mutated.
Who was I, then?
Was it really me?
Or was it only a dream?
So many names,
so many lives,
so many styles of clothes
so many books, so many people
separate me from that naive trusting boy.
Who would recognize my prodigal face?
For thirty years I’ve gnawed innocently on bitterness.
This city fortifies itself for an Olympic siege;
and for reasons that are incomprehensible
I have come here.
My Friends,
I hear your words:
those notes, which fill the night air,
keeping me company,
as they penetrate through the cracks of this particle board box
I have constructed and call home,
The rain has forced me to remain inside for now;
but I sing with it tonight.
I sing the song of laughter.
I reach out for new friends.
It is hard but so is seeing the moon behind the clouds.
I just have to be patient.
and soon this storm will blow over.
Smyon-Pa 