The silent screams
were the hardest to bear

Mouth    agape
Eyes fixed on some
far
off
point.
The pain behind them too much
to comprehend from an
outside perspective

It's not you
It's more like some alien fish gasping for breath
pulled suddenly ashore

I sit there

helpless

tears in my eyes, too.

Praying as hard as I can that this paroxysm will soon pass and
that the deafening silence will cease its roaring

raindrops

It's a rainy day. This is good - we're in desperate need of rain around here.
I spent a good chunk of the day tromping around in the elements. When I got home this evening, I changed outta my wet clothes and snuggled under a warm blanket, read a little and listening to the rain falling outside. The sound of the raindrops reminded me of this poem I had to memorize in college for a class, and then later got to sing as the text of a Debussy song.

Il pleure dans mon coeur . . .

Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville,
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon coeur?

O bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits!
Pour un coeur qui s'ennuie
O le chant de la pluie!

Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce coeur qui s'écoeure.
Quoi? nulle trahison?
Ce deuil est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi,
Sans amour et sans haine,
Mon coeur a tant de peine.

-Paul Verlaine

spleen

I love that Baudelaire entitled some of his poems "spleen."

What a wonderfully descriptive and so very un-French word for him to choose.

I have no idea why I was thinking about this. I am not in a spleen-like mood myself - in fact, I am quite content. But the thought struck me all the same.

I've always enjoyed Baudlaire's Les Fleurs du Mal poems. Perhaps for the same reason that my musical tastes tend to run towards minor keys: I enjoy their melancholic nature. Their affect, if you will. Never underestimate the power of the dark side.