alan brownjohn
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The Rain Diary

For my geography project I would keep a rain diary, a record starting
on 1st January of the days that year when it rained and approximately
how much.

On 1st January there was no rain. On 2nd January there was no rain.
It did not rain on the 3rd of 4th either. Would I go back to school on 8th
January with nothing to show? Only blank pages with the dates in
blue-black italic and the expectation of punishment?

Amanda kept a sunshine diary. The sun shone all the time that New Year,
every day was like the legendary 1st January 1942. I saw long shadows
of bare trees in Amanda's garden revolving on the stiff white grass
as the sun crawled low and bright round the Warwickshire sky.
Amanda, day by day, logged her hours of sunshine in duffle coat
and mittens, putting out her tongue to warm her finger tips.

Tiny planes inched over the blue from the aerodrome leaving lacy
strips of vapour which crumbled into strung-out blurs. There was no rain
on 5th, 6th or 7th. I gained a sense of what life in general would be like.

On 8th January I stood at 8.55 a.m. on the worn stone step of the
school with my blank diary - and raindrops fell. But I had no time to
write anything down, the bell was pounding in the school campanile and
we could not be late. So I opened my rain diary and let the rain fall into it,
stain it and crinkle it, as the others fled past me into school.

To which rain I added my own joyful tears, knowing that Amanda
might have statistics but I had a concrete event.

Due to popular demand, here's a short update:

Don't ask why,
just
let the shadows of yesterday's past
be but a flicker of dust particle
in the golden tomb of imaginative revolution
and then the walls of doubt bouncing
the reverberation of sorrow's cry
fall when reason knocks
clumbering loose jocular frightful
clanging of jittery goodbye
fading away
like the moon on a wintry night
begets a lost river of misery's might
obsessive longing jams the bleak
velvet sky leaving traces of
indignant melancholy
floating and blistering the alleys
of joy and peace,
glistening clusters of existential exfoliation
bleeds the grey green ocean of blantant incompetence
clinging to the skin,
sinking every minute
closing in on the helples faculty
like a wolf,
like a bat,
like a vampire,
like a predator,
when the bluebirds cry,
the prison cells of the mind
will unlock the grim gruesome
hallucinations of hell
into the frantic caves of untamed anger
until the universe stops
turning
and the second hand of the clock stops ticking
blistening barnacles
with thundering typhoons
will crash into
the hemisphere of agony
pressed hard to homicidal possibility
incessantly unleashing fractured obscurity
leading to uncontrollable monstrosity
shutting down procreativity
propelling nervous insecurity
like an out of track boomerang
tearing tranquility
annihilating stability
and leaving nothing but cold stinging cruelty
burning relentlessly
forcefully vanquishing the
preoccupation of modesty
into streaks of indecency
only clouds of wanton extremity
could unveil the blinds of idiosyncracy
Listen, but a wail
has torn through the horizon
of bitter tomorrow
only to find a bolt of insignificant inspiration
jumping in a can of wounded mortality
breaking the dawn
like a broken sword
kissing the torso of a valiant knight
only to break the freckles of glisten in his armour
changing nothing but
freeing the dust from the earth
unlocking nothing but
freedom itself
flowing with unprecedented velocity
joining the veins of a Marsian artistry
shaking the bells of a forgotten monastery
only to loose the way
and see no road
leading to eternity