I’ve been thinking about our old place out in the desert. It was ramshackle and the pipes were leaking, but it was ours. That screen door wouldn’t have stayed on if we’d cemented it into its hinges. The attic smelled of decay and I am certain that creature we found in the basement was actually a scorpion mixed with a cat. But that place was ours.
This is a test, this is only a test. Your words are disappearing. Soon you will have no “flood”, no “deluge”, not even a word for ocean. Be wary of the large tomes that try to give them back to you. You may confuse the word you’re looking for with zealot, or gelatinous. This is a test this is only a test. Your words are disappearing.
There’s an emptiness in my heart when you’re gone. The drought was before, now the passion is full. Don’t leave; strangely I’d like to drown today. Instead of being so empty like before.
It had been the longest summer any of us could remember. Heat shimmered in the air, the earth cracked and crumbled away into fine, ashy dust. The drought had taken everything away from the land—there was nothing left now but a dry, dusty expanse of land and the memory of the sensation of green grass beneath bare feet.
The drought had long since dried up the rivers and killed the plants. The animals were being slaughtered to be humane. Far better for them to die a quick death and go to the starving mouths than to let them remain alive and dying of thirst.
The dirt cake everything and more than one person had died. Everyone had taken the water for granted. After all, we have oceans full of water. I curse that we forgot that we couldn’t drink it.
I stare up into the burning sun and pray to anything and everything that today we get some rain. Even a sprinkle would help me, I think. Though I know I just want to die feeling water on my face. It’s been a long five years and I have outlived my family. It’s time for the earth to reclaim me. I will offer my dying body and soul to anyone who will end this drought.
There was a terrible drought, and famine spread across the land like a plague. No one could believe just that short 6 months ago we were a thriving people group, with plentiful resources. Crazy what unexpected things can do to cripple you.
Blythe
In the middle of the night, I awoke to the sound of crickets. Something else woke me though. It was my conscience. It was the lack of remorse I had when I told him I no longer loved him. I have had a drought of care since he stopped caring.
The table was bare, but for one sheet of paper and a blunted pencil. There were no words, just scribbles, squiggles, and a rough drawing of a cat. Though the rain pounded against the window, my drought of ideas would not see respite soon.
tonykeyesjapan
The lingering absence on your tongue
The cracking and bleeding of your chapped lips
The want, no, the need, for something to satiate you
Something
Anything
Stop callin’ me chicken noodle. If we get caught up in a drought again like all happen’d last year, you ain’t gon’ be sayin no chicken noodle. You gon’ be sayin’ fetch me that puddle o’er yon, and boy if I ain’t gon’ holler back atchoo not one dang lick.
on the path spiraling
love is a serpent
winged, scaled, defiant all
beast impossible to captain
but able to ride
cragged mountain lair
fevered jungle and
deep lakes of fire
we fall, or tossed, or crushed
rise, gain visions, vistas undreamt
hack away
for want of a tree
fuel
or placating some god
and only knowing
after tears
something heavenly, broken
within
in the darkness, a small glitter. a pin, maybe. A piece of dust. Literal glitter? The sort that falls from your skin and purse after returning from the club? it’s so small in the deep and dark. Stoop to pick it up. Brush the floor with your fingers. They come away clean. And now, the lights.
the empty glass on the table stared at her. she reached for it, and pulled her hand back again. it meant something to her, but she didn’t know what it meant. it didn’t mean emptiness or loss. it just meant… a glass. without water.
If this counts as a good thing
I’m dying every day
Breathing in the same stale air
That slowly looses substance
Let me offer my condolence
If it means anything at all:
This is not as much a lack of life
As it is a drought
In the middle of an island
The drought had been on too long. Dusty cracks in the ground were getting wider and deeper, and Suzette soon knew that she would be able to put her entire foot inside, and then she could perhaps disappear. She wasn’t sure if it was something good or bad, not yet.
Amanda
A drought of ideas. From each cactus to the next: fifty feet. Farther than my flashlight can reach. How to find that oasis?
Her pulse had run dry. Nothing came from the meager deposits of energy and passion and creativity the rivers of her veins, her very life, produced anymore. She collapsed onto her back, the springs in her bed squeaking and rocking for a moment. What was the point anymore?
My eyes burn as I look at you, but it’s a desert in the corners of them. Not a tear forms, much less drops from them. I look at you, still, and you can’t keep your gaze on me. You know. The dry wind blowing has infiltrated our hollow hearts.
The desert floor cracked under the beating sun, day after day. It reached deep within the earth, the rays of sunlight touching places not seen by the naked eye. Summer, the drought leaving all bare and untouched, except for the wisps of wind that would carry the sand and dirt from here to there.
You were a steady Rain
I did not mind
I danced in it, I thrived in it
I scooped you into my hands and smiled because
I love the Rain and I love you.
You were a drizzle at first, a sprinkle of droplets on my windshield that
I was unsure if I should wipe away, but then you filled my vision,
you pounded on the glass and oh, I was lost in you, Rain, and I thought you were lost too
until the strong beat of your downpour grew weaker and soon what was a hurricane
was a soft pitter-patter that drove me insane
with desire for the tsunami that was your love I didn’t quite appreciate
damn I miss that tidal wave of ecstacy from being with you, Rain
I guess you forgot about me too, Rain, because you were nowhere to be seen
not in puddles or rain clouds or in my dreams
And it was quiet, Rain, so quiet
I missed your raptaptapping and your sweet embrace
I wanted you, Rain, I wanted to taste the history we had,
I wanted to feel those Rain dances on my lips
and the dew on my ankles from that first time we kissed but
you were nowhere to be seen, Rain,
not in puddles or rain clouds or in my dreams.
I made my own rain, Rain, when yours dried up
I drowned in it, Rain, I drowned in our lost love
I soaked it up like a sponge
The world was barren and hot and unforgiving
and you, Rain, found other girls that like dancing.
What felt like “drown”
was a drought
a dustbowl, empty, desert
you were not my rain to keep
you were gone, Rain, where’d you go?
Rain, can’t we be friends?
I love you, Rain,
come again, Rain,
come again.
I yearn to travel again to that one city, where everyone’s alarm is the 6:00am thunderclap. You remember, right? The same city where shorts are an unstlyish luxury and peacoats the standard. Where travelers step through puddles that have their own riverways and inlets, where the gutters are just a decoration under the cataclysmic and unending rainfall, where every monsoon is a holiday.
Oh, what’s the name?
Tristaforma, that’s it.
The citydwellers are always on the move, floating through the alleyways, always in a hurry to go nowhere of significance and always arriving where the flow takes them, like water’s cycle, stuck on repeat and immutable. And the calamitous raindrops that strike Tristaforma’s stone skin get washed away by the flood on which the city floats.
The drought killed thousands of livestock, including the cattle that my father owned, leaving us to pack our minivan and abandon the property. The dust was swarming the day we left, clusters of insectile dirt particles collecting on the tires, as the heat choked us even with the windows down. I propped myself against the seat and ignored the beeping of my little brother’s portable gaming console, desperate to see a cloud in the sky.
Belinda Roddie
Drought of ideas. Drought of water. Drought of generosity. Drought of goodwill. Look around and you’ll always find a drought. But when it doesn’t rain, it pours. Be careful what you look for.
Paul Eveleigh
“Without aid, this drought could destroy EVERYTHING your mother worked for-”
“And so could this!” she declared, bashing her hands on the desk. “All she wanted for me, all she EVER wanted, was for me to be happy. To marry for LOVE, not for power or-or protection,” she turned her eyes heavenward. “I can’t destroy her legacy like this. I CAN’T,”
Hackett reached out, resting a hand on her shoulder. “With all due respect, my lady, I don’t believe you have a choice.” he said, his voice soft. “Your mother wanted better things for you, I know. But she also knew her duty…and when it had to come first,”
It hadn’t occurred to me that an organic juice, coffee and wine bar might have to be a bit reliant on the weather. Guess we didn’t cover all our bases. Now what to do about these diminishing profits…?
The desert’s been dead for twenty years. That what my grandparents say. I think that its been much longer though. I’ve seen the way the ground crackles, and the way Ms. Jenny down the street stares at the sky every time we see a single wisp of cloud. maybe they are wrong and its been twenty-two, or twenty-five. Or maybe we all are, and its been centuries since we needed water, and to expect it is like expecting to live forever.
The desert’s been dead a long time. And we’re still here.
mae
The drought caused the crops to wither and grow black. John’s labours had been disrupted only months before during the last days of winter but once again nature was a malevolent force. As a Canadian he had wrestled with this notion as his life, in his readings and in his work. Now, as an American farmer, he could no longer dodge his heritage.
There has been so much drought out West, and now flooding. I can only pray for the people who are going through these bad times, and bad times to come.
Dry, empty, forsaken. When will it come, my satisfaction, my relief. I jump at every scent of fulfilment, a whisper of rain has me dreaming for days. I am no longer capable to keep friends near, I have nothing for them. The rain has not yet come. But soon, soon rivers will flow again, flowers will once again blossom. Children will jump in puddles, teenagers will let loose in ravaging rivers. There will be overflow, others will benefit from the juiciness of the fruits I grow. Oh drought, be gone, your sting is no more, hope is abundant, water will come.
Jose
This is affecting her soul. The sun in her head has dried her heart up. This drought though, I wonder how long it can last. She never did question that before.
They told me I was in a spiritual drought. I need God to replinish me, I needed God to rain down on my soul. I was growing on my own, it was them who tore away all my spirit, leaving me apparently bare. It was them that killed me. Without them, I would be fine, I wasn’t in need of God, I was in need of independence.
A lack of rain, of water. Thirst and death. Unless you want to be metaphorical. A drought of ideas, imagination, thought, love, happiness. Bla bla bla. It sort of feels disrespectful to complain about a drought like that, when there are people for whom the word ‘drought’ means something far more serious.
going through the drought for the first time. It was nothing that he could of imagined, all in all a spectacular experience with blinding lights, passing underground trains and the cold sound of falling water.
Stef
My eyes are definitely not in a drought. They won’t stop raining. And D’Ette Marie Marceaux I hope you are reading this to know that I did this without you because you abandoned me in a place where I knew no one I would talk to. Because you left to “use the bathroom” and didn’t come back for half an hour but to pack up your bag and not say a word. Thanks, “friend,” I really appreciate the gesture. Have fun with him, because you sure as heck won’t be having fun with me while this continues to be.
There’s a drought in the sea
so clearly unseen
life drifts away, so easily
without notice
without a trace,
life vanishes away
like water in a drought.
a hundred years from now
water will flow
water will spout
out of this place
where the drought replaced
green meadows and grasslands
and the home of the brave.
Amber
The water had gone. A new generation has grown up and left this world altogether; the ones alive now had never known the beauty of the ocean’s shore, or the feel of salty sea spray on their skin. They had never played with the waves at the water’s edge, tempting fate and wetting their sand-filled shoes.
But they listened.
The children grew up on such stories, told to them by their parents and the elders of the city. Through them they learned of the Ocean, and of lakes and rivers and streams; of water that fell from the sky in torrents, that it once pooled in the city streets where the children used to play.
And they knew.
They knew that even as they survived in the desert wasteland they called home, alongside the ever-burning Sun and the sand that clung to your skin; they knew that while the people of the desert had learned how to survive, they no longer knew how to live.
Imagination run dry. What to think? What to feel? What are new thoughts, ideas, inspirations? What isn’t cliche? What is there left to come up with, when everything has been taken? Creativity is running on empty. This is the drought of the new.
I’ve been thinking about our old place out in the desert. It was ramshackle and the pipes were leaking, but it was ours. That screen door wouldn’t have stayed on if we’d cemented it into its hinges. The attic smelled of decay and I am certain that creature we found in the basement was actually a scorpion mixed with a cat. But that place was ours.
This is a test, this is only a test. Your words are disappearing. Soon you will have no “flood”, no “deluge”, not even a word for ocean. Be wary of the large tomes that try to give them back to you. You may confuse the word you’re looking for with zealot, or gelatinous. This is a test this is only a test. Your words are disappearing.
There’s an emptiness in my heart when you’re gone. The drought was before, now the passion is full. Don’t leave; strangely I’d like to drown today. Instead of being so empty like before.
It had been the longest summer any of us could remember. Heat shimmered in the air, the earth cracked and crumbled away into fine, ashy dust. The drought had taken everything away from the land—there was nothing left now but a dry, dusty expanse of land and the memory of the sensation of green grass beneath bare feet.
The drought had long since dried up the rivers and killed the plants. The animals were being slaughtered to be humane. Far better for them to die a quick death and go to the starving mouths than to let them remain alive and dying of thirst.
The dirt cake everything and more than one person had died. Everyone had taken the water for granted. After all, we have oceans full of water. I curse that we forgot that we couldn’t drink it.
I stare up into the burning sun and pray to anything and everything that today we get some rain. Even a sprinkle would help me, I think. Though I know I just want to die feeling water on my face. It’s been a long five years and I have outlived my family. It’s time for the earth to reclaim me. I will offer my dying body and soul to anyone who will end this drought.
There was a terrible drought, and famine spread across the land like a plague. No one could believe just that short 6 months ago we were a thriving people group, with plentiful resources. Crazy what unexpected things can do to cripple you.
In the middle of the night, I awoke to the sound of crickets. Something else woke me though. It was my conscience. It was the lack of remorse I had when I told him I no longer loved him. I have had a drought of care since he stopped caring.
The table was bare, but for one sheet of paper and a blunted pencil. There were no words, just scribbles, squiggles, and a rough drawing of a cat. Though the rain pounded against the window, my drought of ideas would not see respite soon.
The lingering absence on your tongue
The cracking and bleeding of your chapped lips
The want, no, the need, for something to satiate you
Something
Anything
Stop callin’ me chicken noodle. If we get caught up in a drought again like all happen’d last year, you ain’t gon’ be sayin no chicken noodle. You gon’ be sayin’ fetch me that puddle o’er yon, and boy if I ain’t gon’ holler back atchoo not one dang lick.
The cracked heels of old women, the jagged edges of tough skin coming apart at the white cracks like sunburnt dirt.
on the path spiraling
love is a serpent
winged, scaled, defiant all
beast impossible to captain
but able to ride
cragged mountain lair
fevered jungle and
deep lakes of fire
we fall, or tossed, or crushed
rise, gain visions, vistas undreamt
hack away
for want of a tree
fuel
or placating some god
and only knowing
after tears
something heavenly, broken
within
in the darkness, a small glitter. a pin, maybe. A piece of dust. Literal glitter? The sort that falls from your skin and purse after returning from the club? it’s so small in the deep and dark. Stoop to pick it up. Brush the floor with your fingers. They come away clean. And now, the lights.
the empty glass on the table stared at her. she reached for it, and pulled her hand back again. it meant something to her, but she didn’t know what it meant. it didn’t mean emptiness or loss. it just meant… a glass. without water.
If this counts as a good thing
I’m dying every day
Breathing in the same stale air
That slowly looses substance
Let me offer my condolence
If it means anything at all:
This is not as much a lack of life
As it is a drought
In the middle of an island
The drought had been on too long. Dusty cracks in the ground were getting wider and deeper, and Suzette soon knew that she would be able to put her entire foot inside, and then she could perhaps disappear. She wasn’t sure if it was something good or bad, not yet.
A drought of ideas. From each cactus to the next: fifty feet. Farther than my flashlight can reach. How to find that oasis?
Her pulse had run dry. Nothing came from the meager deposits of energy and passion and creativity the rivers of her veins, her very life, produced anymore. She collapsed onto her back, the springs in her bed squeaking and rocking for a moment. What was the point anymore?
My eyes burn as I look at you, but it’s a desert in the corners of them. Not a tear forms, much less drops from them. I look at you, still, and you can’t keep your gaze on me. You know. The dry wind blowing has infiltrated our hollow hearts.
The desert floor cracked under the beating sun, day after day. It reached deep within the earth, the rays of sunlight touching places not seen by the naked eye. Summer, the drought leaving all bare and untouched, except for the wisps of wind that would carry the sand and dirt from here to there.
You were a steady Rain
I did not mind
I danced in it, I thrived in it
I scooped you into my hands and smiled because
I love the Rain and I love you.
You were a drizzle at first, a sprinkle of droplets on my windshield that
I was unsure if I should wipe away, but then you filled my vision,
you pounded on the glass and oh, I was lost in you, Rain, and I thought you were lost too
until the strong beat of your downpour grew weaker and soon what was a hurricane
was a soft pitter-patter that drove me insane
with desire for the tsunami that was your love I didn’t quite appreciate
damn I miss that tidal wave of ecstacy from being with you, Rain
I guess you forgot about me too, Rain, because you were nowhere to be seen
not in puddles or rain clouds or in my dreams
And it was quiet, Rain, so quiet
I missed your raptaptapping and your sweet embrace
I wanted you, Rain, I wanted to taste the history we had,
I wanted to feel those Rain dances on my lips
and the dew on my ankles from that first time we kissed but
you were nowhere to be seen, Rain,
not in puddles or rain clouds or in my dreams.
I made my own rain, Rain, when yours dried up
I drowned in it, Rain, I drowned in our lost love
I soaked it up like a sponge
The world was barren and hot and unforgiving
and you, Rain, found other girls that like dancing.
What felt like “drown”
was a drought
a dustbowl, empty, desert
you were not my rain to keep
you were gone, Rain, where’d you go?
Rain, can’t we be friends?
I love you, Rain,
come again, Rain,
come again.
I yearn to travel again to that one city, where everyone’s alarm is the 6:00am thunderclap. You remember, right? The same city where shorts are an unstlyish luxury and peacoats the standard. Where travelers step through puddles that have their own riverways and inlets, where the gutters are just a decoration under the cataclysmic and unending rainfall, where every monsoon is a holiday.
Oh, what’s the name?
Tristaforma, that’s it.
The citydwellers are always on the move, floating through the alleyways, always in a hurry to go nowhere of significance and always arriving where the flow takes them, like water’s cycle, stuck on repeat and immutable. And the calamitous raindrops that strike Tristaforma’s stone skin get washed away by the flood on which the city floats.
My mouth is on fire! I need some water!
Can’t get water. There’s a drought you selfish #*%*(.
AHHHHH!
The drought killed thousands of livestock, including the cattle that my father owned, leaving us to pack our minivan and abandon the property. The dust was swarming the day we left, clusters of insectile dirt particles collecting on the tires, as the heat choked us even with the windows down. I propped myself against the seat and ignored the beeping of my little brother’s portable gaming console, desperate to see a cloud in the sky.
Drought of ideas. Drought of water. Drought of generosity. Drought of goodwill. Look around and you’ll always find a drought. But when it doesn’t rain, it pours. Be careful what you look for.
“Without aid, this drought could destroy EVERYTHING your mother worked for-”
“And so could this!” she declared, bashing her hands on the desk. “All she wanted for me, all she EVER wanted, was for me to be happy. To marry for LOVE, not for power or-or protection,” she turned her eyes heavenward. “I can’t destroy her legacy like this. I CAN’T,”
Hackett reached out, resting a hand on her shoulder. “With all due respect, my lady, I don’t believe you have a choice.” he said, his voice soft. “Your mother wanted better things for you, I know. But she also knew her duty…and when it had to come first,”
It hadn’t occurred to me that an organic juice, coffee and wine bar might have to be a bit reliant on the weather. Guess we didn’t cover all our bases. Now what to do about these diminishing profits…?
The desert’s been dead for twenty years. That what my grandparents say. I think that its been much longer though. I’ve seen the way the ground crackles, and the way Ms. Jenny down the street stares at the sky every time we see a single wisp of cloud. maybe they are wrong and its been twenty-two, or twenty-five. Or maybe we all are, and its been centuries since we needed water, and to expect it is like expecting to live forever.
The desert’s been dead a long time. And we’re still here.
The drought caused the crops to wither and grow black. John’s labours had been disrupted only months before during the last days of winter but once again nature was a malevolent force. As a Canadian he had wrestled with this notion as his life, in his readings and in his work. Now, as an American farmer, he could no longer dodge his heritage.
There has been so much drought out West, and now flooding. I can only pray for the people who are going through these bad times, and bad times to come.
Dry, empty, forsaken. When will it come, my satisfaction, my relief. I jump at every scent of fulfilment, a whisper of rain has me dreaming for days. I am no longer capable to keep friends near, I have nothing for them. The rain has not yet come. But soon, soon rivers will flow again, flowers will once again blossom. Children will jump in puddles, teenagers will let loose in ravaging rivers. There will be overflow, others will benefit from the juiciness of the fruits I grow. Oh drought, be gone, your sting is no more, hope is abundant, water will come.
This is affecting her soul. The sun in her head has dried her heart up. This drought though, I wonder how long it can last. She never did question that before.
They told me I was in a spiritual drought. I need God to replinish me, I needed God to rain down on my soul. I was growing on my own, it was them who tore away all my spirit, leaving me apparently bare. It was them that killed me. Without them, I would be fine, I wasn’t in need of God, I was in need of independence.
A lack of rain, of water. Thirst and death. Unless you want to be metaphorical. A drought of ideas, imagination, thought, love, happiness. Bla bla bla. It sort of feels disrespectful to complain about a drought like that, when there are people for whom the word ‘drought’ means something far more serious.
going through the drought for the first time. It was nothing that he could of imagined, all in all a spectacular experience with blinding lights, passing underground trains and the cold sound of falling water.
My eyes are definitely not in a drought. They won’t stop raining. And D’Ette Marie Marceaux I hope you are reading this to know that I did this without you because you abandoned me in a place where I knew no one I would talk to. Because you left to “use the bathroom” and didn’t come back for half an hour but to pack up your bag and not say a word. Thanks, “friend,” I really appreciate the gesture. Have fun with him, because you sure as heck won’t be having fun with me while this continues to be.
There’s a drought in the sea
so clearly unseen
life drifts away, so easily
without notice
without a trace,
life vanishes away
like water in a drought.
a hundred years from now
water will flow
water will spout
out of this place
where the drought replaced
green meadows and grasslands
and the home of the brave.
The water had gone. A new generation has grown up and left this world altogether; the ones alive now had never known the beauty of the ocean’s shore, or the feel of salty sea spray on their skin. They had never played with the waves at the water’s edge, tempting fate and wetting their sand-filled shoes.
But they listened.
The children grew up on such stories, told to them by their parents and the elders of the city. Through them they learned of the Ocean, and of lakes and rivers and streams; of water that fell from the sky in torrents, that it once pooled in the city streets where the children used to play.
And they knew.
They knew that even as they survived in the desert wasteland they called home, alongside the ever-burning Sun and the sand that clung to your skin; they knew that while the people of the desert had learned how to survive, they no longer knew how to live.
The water had gone. A new generation has grown up and left this world altogether, the ones alive now never knew the beauty of the seashore.
Imagination run dry. What to think? What to feel? What are new thoughts, ideas, inspirations? What isn’t cliche? What is there left to come up with, when everything has been taken? Creativity is running on empty. This is the drought of the new.