rain from these clouds

8/9/2019 rain from these clouds

1/19

rain from these clouds

poems by blare coughlin


2/19


3/19

jerked out of sleep

jerked out of unconsciousness

jerked out of staring very intently at a spot

roughly a foot to the left of someone’s head

to surface from the pools that the world keeps

dropping me in is a challenge and a slow

embrace that time is mutable, that awareness

is always flitting from one branch to another

does awareness have the figure-eight wing

pattern of a hummingbird

and the metabolic rate to boot


4/19

i am tired of building a cocoon around me

i have carried this shell for so long

and made it out of tears and pain and a need

for defense, a need for tiny spikes on leather

shoulders

i want to be soft, now

the world is rigid and i want to comfort it

i want to be a beanbag rolling down a flight

of stairs

dizzy, unscathed

i want to be as gentle as a ripened fig

that splits at a touch

and gives sweetness eagerly

because it is made to be sweet

the world is hard and unforgiving

but we are reclaiming softnesscarrying and holding each other

kissing our foreheads and feeling

downy peach fuzz on each other’s cheeks


5/19

i have not spoken out loud to another human being for 2 days

except for saying thank you to the cashier at the grocery storeand saying hello in a phone call made by a robot

when i feel about as bad as i can feel

i often think about getting rid of my voice

trading it for legs, or cutting out my tongue

i have an accent that is hard to placebut i think maybe instead of it being a pale carbon copy of the

albertan twang

which is, right now, the hypothesis

it might be the way words sound when you chew on them

and feel them come out of your mouth like a handful of marbles

or soap bubbles flying away

despite not talking much, or not having a reason to

i can project my voice with my diaphragm

across the room into the hallway

a callback from standing on a stage, age 13, forgetting all my

lines

sometimes i put on the projection like a mask

and am the loudest person in the room

i have not spoken out loud to another human being in 2 days

but i am talking to myself in the kitchen

talking to the eggs as they fry

talking to the rising bread

talking to the small birds hopping outside on the power lines


6/19

i will claw open the valley and make my own river

i will rip the forests out of the earth

i will make my habitat out of sweat and matchsticks

and burn the whole thing down


7/19

i used to write fanfiction when i was younger

and every so often i get emails from people who

have subscribed, which means that they are

notified when a story is updated.

none of these stories have been updated since 2009

and it feels funny, or tragic, or heartening,

that there are people still waiting for a thrilling conclusion

to something that i thought of when i was 14.

sometimes i wonder what kind of people do this.usually i assume that theyre kids the same age as i was

or maybe old fans paging through old shame?

i don’t know. it seems like a weird thing to have nostalgia

about.

thinking about a younger me sitting in the tiny home office

when my parents were at workone hand on the chin, one hand on the mouse

does this mean im nostalgic for the internet?

should i have more memories of green hills and sand?

should i feel warm when i think about the path to the monks’

baths

instead of the emails ive saved from middle school, deep in afolder?

i get another message from someone who has subscribed to a

story

i have not touched for six years. i don’t respond but it makes

me stand up

and stretch, and thank god my parents had dial-up.


8/19

a cat is in heat in the alley outside and is yowling the same

cry i make when i stub my toe


9/19

ideas for performance art pieces keep bubbling up and

breaking the surface tension of my brain, at rest.a nurse told me fairly recently i have an exceptionally slow

heart rate, and asked if i was an athlete. i told her no.

i keep meaning to go play capture the flag on sunday

afternoons, but i never make it out of the house.

performance art piece idea number one: covering a naked

body with glitter and documenting the process to get all ofit off

call it “homonationalism”, nice.

performance art piece idea number two: giving away

pieces of your own clothing, cutting it off chunk by chunk,

then rearing on collected audience

performance art piece idea number three: doing “nothing”

for twelve to sixteen hours

performance art piece idea number four: standing in an

empty museum gallery screaming in a death growl for as

long as the throat can bear, than continuing to yell with

broken voice until gallery closes

the ideas sink down pretty quickly, like grape seeds in

soda. they’ll come back up fifteen minutes later but i will

have read how carbon dioxide bubbles out of solution

when pressure is released and i won’t be so keen.


10/19

thought,while staringat my legsstraight outon the bed:“good lord, iam so long”


11/19

im making cupcakes e ven though im not hungry

and watching the icing melt off the top of each

one

sugar pools at my feet, and blood rushes to my

head

im tra veling through time one second persecond

listening to lightning bolt while it rains outside

i eat to keep myself ali ve

i can taste this life in e very bite

and i want to spit it out into the sink


12/19

ive never felt like a woman and i have never felt like

a man

i feel like i am standing in a hallway in an apartment

at a party

where the room with my coat and the room with my

boots are both closed

and i am pretty sure people are having sex in there

so i don’t want to go in

the people in the rooms at this party have sex for an

eternity so

i make a nest in the hallway next to the radiator

sometimes people walk by on their way out

“don’t you want to get your coat,” they say

“don’t you want your shoes”

it is warm by the radiator, and outside it is always

mid-february

and i am always saying no to offers of coats and

shoes

because why can’t i just sleep over in this hallway

for six million years


13/19

i am sitting beside myself on a sofa in the student

lounge

and the me that’s not me is making eye contact

for 2-4 seconds with e veryone who comes in

is this weird, thinks the me that is me

a couple, tall man short woman, walk in and the

me that’s not me makes eye contact with the

woman

she is very fashionably dressed

my existence, more often than not, feels like a

con versation bet ween t wo people

only one of which kno ws ho w to communicate

appropriately

the other one is making eye contact with the girls

sitting across from me

who kiss e very time my gaze goes back do wn


14/19

alarmingly, i have a physical body

which would be okay, but

somebody threw out the user manual a while ago

i called in to the manufacturer to see if they could

send me a new copy

but it seems that my model is a victim of planned

obsolescence

and they have no more spare parts.


15/19

i could probably put a few thousand baby carrots into that

swimming pool, i tell myself

while in a plane flying low over miami about to land

i wonder how many dogs have swam in that swimming pool, i

think

looking at bright blue dots in a very large subdivision

the funny thing is, whenever you look at a pool from above

there never seems to be anyone in it.

when we finally make contact with aliens

and manage to become mutually intelligible

the first thing they will ask us is why

we have pools of water in the backyards of the south

and why nobody is ever swimming in them

not even dogs, not even retirees.

one day all the pools in south florida will grow algae

and green over

and mold will grow between their tiles.

one day the sun covers will biodegrade

the pool noodles will flake away into tiny pink and purple bits

and the blue dots will blend in to the green gray landscape.


16/19

wake up wi th blood be t ween th

e tee th

and si x curses on the shoulders

a he x on you

on the balcon y the sunbeam w

arms the

s teel floor

sca t tering proo f o f the e xis tence

be t ween e ver y couch cushion

making sure the haun ting s ta ys

take ou t your dog tee th

take ou t your milk tee th

thro w them ou t the god damn windo w

s tand on the s teel balcon y and

shi ver

wi th co f fee and a thick jacke t

si x s teps behind

a he x on youlea ving the hous

e

wi th the haun ting pushing the b

od y


17/19

i am trying to solidify a personal pantheon or mythologyand putting a chloroform-soaked rag into a jar of butterflies

pin down every pen stroke, pin down every eraser smudgethe scales on the wings slough off with a touch

i can draw the same thing for hours over and over and itdoes not get oldand it does not get oldand the butterfly metaphor ends herebecause the tiny exoskeleton

s are falling apartkeratin giving upbut i am still alivei am drawing the same thing

my personal mythology or pantheon is made of smooth linesand very wide eyesand taking melatonin befo

re sleeping because even if itdoesn’t work for you the placebo effect is theremy personal pantheon is kind of a misnomerinstead of gods there are just kitchen appliances with tinylegs running across the pagethere they go

my body is made of smooth lines and wide eyes and i amstill drawing it

i am still going over every inch with a fine linethe nib is wearing down, i don’t care

my personal pantheon or mythology is trickling out of me likea nosebleedstaining my shirt, sta

ining my handsi will pin it downi will pin it down


18/19

some parts of me are left

in the footprints on the beach

where i walked, sun burning my shoulders

and salt wind pressing my chest

firmly, insistently

reminding me im a being of flesh and bone

the music i hear when im about to fall asleep

sounds like the echo of the two years i can’t remember

and the fog that lives in my head

where those memories should burn

the memories i don’t have live somewhere around myankles

so i will roll them often

but never break them

coming close to the point of pain and letting it slip right out

your fingers

like jerking awake

and the music i hear when i’m about to fall asleeprunning up the stairs of an apartment building

and shutting its door


19/19

rain from these clouds

Documents