My knuckles crack, and split, and bleed,
And my gaze blurs with sandpaper eyes,
The wind devours everything in its greed,
Punctuated by a raven’s throaty cries.
I feel thin, and stretched, and fragile,
Too little skin shielding me from the heat,
The wind rips and rends and I unravel,
Standing against it is more than a feat.
My head throbs, and aches, and pounds,
A hammer bursting through at my temples,
The wind gusts and the pressure abounds,
The resulting misery is beyond ample.
I long for relief: cool, and dark, and calm,
Someplace I can hide away from my pain for the day,
The wind sucks at the the windows, singing its song,
A disheartening and troubling raucous bray.
My knuckles crack, and split, and bleed,
The red of my life spills across the paper,
The wind tosses it like a tumbling weed,
Punctuated with a thousand cutting sabers.
The Matticus Kingdom 
Reminds me of Hemingway’s quote about writing. Very nice poem and beautiful photo.
What’s the quote?
And thanks! I’ll take credit for the poem. And I’ll take credit for scrolling through Google Images to find the photo… but I can’t take credit for the photo itself. 😉
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Whether you were speaking about the agony of writing, that is what I took away from reading it. It is simple . . . just cut yourself open and bleed all over the paper.
I like that quote!!
I wasn’t fully talking about writing… I was mostly actually talking about how dried out I am because of the heat and wind right now… but, I did want the visual of leaving my blood on the page as I wrote the poem. So, it was all connected.
I fully appreciate the dried out conditions in CA would lead one to write about how it feels. We are having dry, warm breezy weather up here in WA, but we are loving it after the very rainy March and April.
Was so sad. The Queen and I, along with the Little Prince, ventured to WA a couple weeks ago to spend some time with family up there, and we got zero rain. Not a single drop.
Yeah, in April, you can usually guarantee some rain up here. But we have had some very beautiful breaks. When it has rained, boy howdy! Of course you were wanting to see some of that liquid elixir from the sky.
Yes. Very much so. We wanted the rain!! We went to where it always rains (Seattle) and we… got not rain. The family we were visiting were so happy to have good weather for us. I don’t think they ever really understood our disappointment.
We’re suppose to have some rain again this weekend. I should bottle some up and send it to you. 😉
That would be fantastic! Just send up to ride along with whatever front is giving us our current wind storm and it should be here lickity split.
Earlier today I was looking at the visible satellite on NOAA and it’s amazing how strong a ridge of dry air we have over the western half of North America. From Texas across to CA then up the coast and great basin all the way into Canada. Crazy!
Crazy and painful. My poor hands!! 😛
Wow. This line is beautiful – “The wind rips and rends and I unravel,”
Absolutely my favourite. But I hope you didn’t live this poem too hard before it got written! Sounds painful.
Not too hard… no. And, really, no different than any other Santa Ana day around here.
Beautiful. I’m actually jealous of the southeast–I wish CA and TX could take some of their rain from them. Just doesn’t seem right that they have to deal with floods and we have drought. So sad for everyone. Feast or famine, huh?
They need to collect the excess and figure out how to “ship” it to then rain on the drought areas!
Everyone wins!
Rain and food. How nice would that be!
It would certainly solve a lot of global problems.
Great photo to accentuate your beautiful poem. The last stanza is particularly stellar…I love it.
Thank you!
I’m glad you liked it. 😀
I was pretty happy about the last stanza too. 😉
Though, I did like the the fist one – the sandpaper eyes and split knuckles were what I was dealing with on my drive into work… those two “feelings” were the basis for everything else.
what’s going on? this one has so few comments … I’ve got some killer hand cream, just sayin’…
I know… I was really pleased with this one too… Kind of sad that it was overlooked by so many. And usually poetry posts have people coming out of the woodwork.
Oh well.
Was just hot and windy yesterday. My hands cracked on the way to work and the blowing dirt caught between my contacts and my eyes. it wasn’t the best start to a day ever… but, I’ve certainly had worse.
got you on the contacts issue – still cool here – you ever been to Chicago?
Only to the airport on my way to other places, so, I don’t think that really counts.
Very visceral poem here; I like it. I know it’s about your experience of heat and drought, but for me it also feels like one of those all-encompassing headaches, especially at the “hammer bursting through at my temples” line. I like that it describes a very specific feeling but also can be read about something different.
Yeah, there are parts of it that could defintely be applied to many different things. Thanks! I’m glad you liked it. And I think we are going to cool off a bit tomorrow. Fingers crossed.
This should be sung, it is so rhythmic.
Thank you for sharing, sorry the dry heat is causing issues, but yay for inspiration from odd places.
Are you offering to put it to music? Or, would you just dance to it once it is put to music? 😉