Cloud seeding—otherwise
known as delivering a chemical dust
high in the Earth's atmosphere
to encourage rainfall
in a particular region—seems
about as selfishly misguided
as sandbagging a flood.
You only sandbag a river
to distract yourself from the inevitable.
It is a massive over-estimation
of existence. This is what I am
thinking while we're fucking.
Steampunk
At the center of beautiful women
who do not love us
burns a white flame.
We are machines
that consume and desire and wont
for such abiding loneliness
that to invite it
is to extract blossoms from the rain.
I am the elevator that opens
on each floor in the metal
hotel of your heart.
And on hearing the laughter
down the endless
hallway, I press a button
and slide shut my doors.
Darren Morris holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth. His poems appear most recently in The 2River View, The Missouri Review, New England Review, and New Ohio Review.