Ronald Palmer
The Logic of Thunder (Between Rounds, 1898-99)
—For Thomas Eakins
A sentence is not emotional a paragraph is. —Gertrude Stein (How To Write)
Bell Dings (the voice of the ring master):A cloud of hysterical sparrows: swarming ashes over the highway. The fogged entrance
to the planting site smelled of fresh earth. Everyone was bending with fistfuls of thunder
and raking thunder into the recently overturned rich black earth. The swarming sparrows
shifted straight up through three parallel wires: arced the circumference of the Danbury
Fair Mall. Swarming sparrows in the shape of thunder gliding like a school of black fish
above the swans calmly gliding on a small swamp near Sears. The entire school of
sparrows freeze-funneling into various shapes: a computer screen: a flying black
hammer: a country made of frantic black wings: finally dropping down into cattails
behind The Christmas Tree Shop. The body is a thousand dark wings: thunderlogic sings
in a vibrating vibrato: stinging with thunder’s yearning: sparrows mimicking an
emotional tornado chaotically sketching a cathedral inside the body of thunder. My
sustained effort toward moaning simulates the mood that swelled in me as I sat swollen
on the side of the Dutch highway: fresh with suffering: after falling drunk from my bike
under the absurd and taunting moon made from leftover thunder. Ideas take the place of
sorrows. My own mental space has evolved a ghetto of grief like the black hole
widening in the center of our Milky Way. Thunder:sigh. Stumble from your sick
academy of silences with nothing to read but the sky.
Bell Dings (the voice of the ring master):
Boxer of thunder: arms a glow. A thousand small strokes: wing:licking his
braided body: hunched: taut: vibrating with yearning. Thunder flung two gold keys
into the thirty-six-year-old pine tree next to the white mailbox. And you honestly
believe: And you honestly believe? Now show each viewer with a thunder:quiver
standing in the chilly Met: viewing from below the lean arms of boxer-model Billy
Smith: shoulder-locked and balancing on two ring-ropes. We see how a solid blow to the
ego grows like thunder skid-thudding across the sky: thunder’s memory jab opens a
beautiful pink slit above the left brow: then a slow thunder growls between two smeared
clouds: spreading an eerie vibration: two hundred souls simultaneously opening into
sound. (It is important not to inflate the life vest inside the aircraft). Thunder refuses to
release a serious snow of forgiveness. Thunder’s farce will continue due to the refusal to
release the news: light theory meets the misconstrued meaning of sound. I’m descending
from a crowd of formlessness: digging for meaning underground. Thunder’s arms poised
in a stance of perpetual agitated stabbing: disguised as a fleshy invitation. Thunder left
no trace of Frost and Rothko: ivory and orange over gray: (Thunder is still wandering
through the fogged entrance: were they marking baby gravestones or planting pear trees?
with fistfuls of black earth): nothing bold can stay. Within thunder’s lucid dream: the
father was infantile and nursing on the body of the dreamer. Forgive me thunder: I
simply know not how to sustain my cry. Stumble from your sick academy of silences
with nothing to read but the sky.
Bell Dings (the voice of the ring master):Capture thunder’s only son: wrap him in a cloud of lies: told on both sides of the no-fly
zone: add a silver gun sliding and re-sliding across thunder’s dangerous tongue. O young
and pleasurable one! Echologics! Thunder’s brother’s breath fills the mouth: keeps
descending into the mouth of thunder’s darkness: a fist of breath inviting thunder’s
impossible forgiveness. How does thunder proceed now that: “reports tell of the recent
suicide bomber stood next to the bus driver when…” the crow swooped over the
highway onto the opened deer: I was thunder behind the wheel: speeding like an ongoing
argument: with thunder’s nature:nurture:logic brooding in the mind-sac well into my late
thirties: (thunderlogic gathers like testosterone shots on the upper right corner of each
ass cheek): bitter:thunder’s bloody swab dropped into pink toilet water. Thunder’s
political dust settles between FBI ears: (O yes: I completely agree: thunder’s best work
in years). Thunder’s religious dogma disguised as economy smeared in blood on the side
of thunder’s most recent burnt bus. Keep sewing a mild elation into the folds of thunder:
raining into grain: a pink combustible crack above tortured landscape’s view: thunder
always wants to become you. (Whispering: thunder always wants to become you.)
Thunder ends with a quick and awkward train-station goodbye. Stumble from your sick
academy of silences with nothing to read but the sky.
Bell Dings (the voice of the ring master):
Thunder’s hyperbolic pun: formlessness tears through each accidental moment:
rearranging internal patterns of flight: two male cardinals criss-cross between my lungs.
The planes entered from opposite directions and then thunder held us all frozen: staring
at both metal mouths on fire. Beyond thunder’s site of comic book evil: this event
continues to cascade in riotous disagreement like two sons: returning to thunder:dust:
while Daddy Carlyle’s still clean: but thunder’s never just what thunder seems.
Thunder’s high maintenance clean up crew sickened with sifting outside thunder’s
silkroom and under the crushed tunnel in which 10 years of candles burn between us:
And you honestly believe you’re the only one: feeding on that thunder? Allow yourself
to be involved in thunder’s release: handing out Polaroids of thunder on the corner of
34th and Lex: everything’s vex: including thunder’s scarification: I’m tired of men who
want to sew my lips with thunder’s milk. I aborted thunder’s tempered stampede: seven-
tenths the speed of sound: thunder’s gone under ground. O mother of thunder: keep
wandering: keep stumbling like a drunk from thunder’s barroom sailor brawl: yes yes:
my my: stumble from your sick academy of silences with nothing to read but the sky.
Bell Rings (the voice of the ring master):
Thundermirror! Nature:nurture’s sedate thy thunderous moment of eat-thy-wafer: look
who’s doing the yawn-talk thing: everywhere I hear a cell phone ring: even ankle deep
in greenish bay: I wake to feel the scent of debt not pay: (nothing sold can stay!):
salivating in the realm of suture: financial terror’s fasting for truth or presenting thyself
as everlasting. Why think of CEO as hoarder when: imbecilic president approves mass
murder.
Put the red sticker on that spoiled pig. He’s thunder:sick without a son: thundertrans: cends lightning on the continuum of punctum. Wrap him in a fisted cloud of his
father’s last breath: drag him from town to town: country to country: injecting thunder’s
farce into the heart of every man. O tender father of thunder: offer your wife as a lie:
stumble from your sick academy of silences with nothing to read but the sky.
Thunder: Thun”der, v. t. To emit with noise and terror; to utter vehemently; to
publish, as a threat or denunciation.Oracles severe Were daily thundered in our general’s ear. –Dryden.
An archdeacon, as being a prelate, may thunder out an ecclesiastical censure. —
Ayliffe.Source </search?q=00-database-info&db;=web1913>: Webster’s Revised
Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.Thunder n 1: a deep prolonged loud noise [syn: boom </search?q=boom>, roar
</search?q=roar>, roaring </search?q=roaring>]2: a booming or crashing noise caused by air expanding along the path of a bolt of
lightning v 1: move fast, noisily, and heavily; “The bus thundered down the road”
2: utter words loudly and forcefully; “‘Get out of here,’ he roared.” [syn: roar</search?q=roar>] 3: be the case that thunder is being heard [syn: boom
</search?q=boom>] 4: to make or produce a loud noise; “The river thundered
below”; “The engine roared as the driver pushed the car to full throttle.”Source </search?q=00-database-info&db;=wn>: WordNet ® 1.6, © 1997 Princeton
UniversityThunder often referred to in Scripture (Job 40:9; Ps. 77:18; 104:7). James and
John were called by our Lord “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17). In Job 39:19, instead
of “thunder,” as in the Authorized Version, the Revised Version translates
(ra’amah) by “quivering main” (marg., “shaking”). Thunder accompanied the
giving of the law at Sinai (Ex. 19:16). It was regarded as the voice of God (Job 37:2;
Ps. 18:13; 81:7; comp. John 12:29). In answer to Samuel’s prayer (1 Sam. 12:17,
18), God sent thunder, and “all the people greatly feared,” for at such a season (the
wheat-harvest) thunder and rain were almost unknown in Palestine.Source </search?q=00-database-info&db;=easton>: Easton’s 1897 Bible Dictionary.
