Thunderous Ode
Leslie G. Roman

**Editor’s Note:  Copyright 2009, Leslie Roman, all rights reserved.

Inside a sinkhole,
Dark, grasping,
Restless thunder,
Thunderous clouds
Tumble, no scatter, scatter, ska, sca, sku, stutter,
My words fall apart, sentences,
Scribbled on a tattered page,
Tumble from the sky,
Fall to earth, scatter, ska, ssssca, sku, stutter, stuck in
My throat, what am I trying to say after all?

How much more--much more I work to be?
There will be no chicken soup for me
This time, there will be no harmony,
No relief
Repetition of darkness,
Dark moon,
No hands,
No sky
No horizon,
Just horizontal space,
Not an enviable slumber party
Flat vision, the plains cannot match this flat sadness

A knee fidgets, Oh, dear psychiatrist, you don’t say!: “Her knee fidgets anxiously”,
Like a moving pendulum, a steel-like ruler in the sky 
Swings to measure the extraordinary,
The Thunder, the lightening, the bolts that short circuit
And through excess swallow the body into a deep cavernous
Sleep without slumber, 
a waking pulse that disorganizes memory,
Feeling and affect, come apart
Did I mention the thunder?
Ska, sccss, scissor, Wish I could scissor out this bleakness 

Dear Vincent, Van Gogh, of course,
Please don’t insult my intelligence
And tell me that your depression brought you
The Starry Night or the Sun Flowers
It must have been The Potato Eaters
That seared my head in half
Weight 88 lbs. Eat now, die later,
Reach into the survivor backpack,
Pull out the old protein ice cream milkshakes
Till death do us not part
But the scale sings a slightly more weighty tune.

Inside a sinkhole 
A small crackle of light,
Criss-crosses the consciousness
Hope rises in the moon
That one hand touches another
To reach the moon

Dear Mr. Van Gogh and Ms. Sylvia Plath,
Where there is no Bell Jar,
There is at least art
A glimmer of moonlight
Against the dark,
We author our own books, 
Tumble as they do from the sky to the beach below,
To frolic with the geckos
Alongside lizards and
Next to colors which we welcome like modest
Light
Tea candles--a different starry night
Than you imagined, Vincent.
Than imagined you, Vincent.


Author’s Artistic Statement:  Before her major depression she did not think her art would save her life. Now, she gets asked in disbelief when people see the bright colors in her paintings, "Funny, your paintings don't look like you were depressed" to which she responds: "Why should I have to paint colors that continue to depress me? These paintings are part of series of five entitled “Depression ? Work: Faultlines in Productivist Citizenship”. Painting is not only a way of being connected to the world, it also a way of being outside the sphere of judgment. Geckos are a symbol of transformation and disability culture is transformative.