The Storm Before The Calm

I'm speechless. Welcome to my blog post this week, you are in for quite the read. Perhaps of all the poems I have ever written and short stories I have ever posted, this singular poem that you are about to read may be the only one to have ever given me uncontrollable chills. By far, this poem takes the cake as my favorite poem on this whole blog site and I will go in depth about why later.

There is a deep sense of mythic beauty and a type of "mystic" tone that flows through every sentence of this content. With a sort of plea to you, I ask you to do one thing before reading this poem: find the song: "Taiga" by a group entitled "ASKII" either on Spotify, Apple Music, or Youtube and listen to it as you slowly read the words of this poem. Music enables emotion and I promise you that it is worth it if you try it here.

This poem stems from an original church talk I wrote on September 22nd, 2022. It speaks for itself, and so please give it your full attention, I'm not sure how to describe how surreal it feels to analyse this one.

(Please start the song now if you have it pulled up)

"The Storm Before The Calm"

It came upon a rowdy dusk,

A dismal, piercing gale,

A phantom in its awful brusque,

To me, while numbed and frail.

The soaking thrash, in bitter spite,

Lanced my tainted skin,

While thunder broke and sky gave light

To the dithered ghost akin.

And with a certain mystic haze,

It beckoned with its call,

Seeing through my weary daze:

No deviance at all.

Yet, when I thought to make escape,

I gawked at its inflection;

For in that misty moonscape,

It offered me protection.

"You need not be oppressed," it spake,

An echo in its tone,

"There's error in this gusty quake,

From spoiled clause well-known."

"Most speak of mythic whimsies,

A 'calm before the storm,'

Yet what they choose to not see,

Is fault in that great norm.”

“If you follow my vague tale,

You’ll witness fatal qualm,

And see the opposite entail:

'The storm before the calm.'"

Defying all realities,

It vanished in a blink,

And left me to my faculties,

Unsure what to think.

"The storm before the calm..." I went,

My mind becoming eased,

For I realized what that spirit meant

When the tempest sudden-ceased.

The erroneous can only see:

There's ease before there's shrill,

But the buoyant truly come to be

When there's tense before there's still.

-Cale K. Montoya

I thought about just letting you marinate in your own thoughts for this one but I wanted to point out some of the art in this piece and offer some insight.

As you have probably been able to tell, this poem has forms of drama laced in its words and line sequences. I have yet to write a poem with this kind of darkness, but I wanted to see how well this type of medium would be received. In my opinion, it helps convey the message with a little more "stick," kind of like a movie that makes you cry or think deeply before you go to bed. The reason these types of pieces make us feel this way is because it makes us feel vulnerable for some reason and in that stage of our emotion, we are able to take in more with a firmer grasp on its concepts. Did that happen to you?

In this poem, I refused to describe the setting as a "storm" in the "night." In a way, this gives the reader a sense of personal freedom when it comes to imaginary picture painting. Instead, I purposefully used terms like: "gale," "soaking thrash," "sky [giving] light," "gusty quake," and "tempest" to describe the storm. Only when the themes began to surface, did the phantom use "storm" in its terminology. Additionally, "rowdy dusk," and "moonscape," implied the lighting of the scene, which I can safely assume made your mental picture "darker."

I took great liberties and measures in creating a scene with unique adjectives... that's the point after a poem after all isn't it? This may sound silly, but as I mentioned before, writing each line of this poem gave me chills and most of that is acquainted with me noticing interesting parallels to some works of Edgar Allan Poe and Edmund Sears. I honor writers who can paint without a brush, all I've ever wanted to be is one.

I wrote this one in first person and we see the personal reaction of a character to a ghost. This was fun to play around with and almost gave me "angelic vision" vibes from church stories that I've read in books and scripture. I mostly wrote it first person so that you, as a reader, can put yourself in this character's shoes and even be them if you want to! The character has no written gender and thus implies that it can be anyone of us.

The theme and purpose of this content is not as noticeable as others and almost seems more entertaining that way. I will not tell you why I wrote this poem, nor will I tell you what it represents and what it is trying to say, because poetry remains poetry when it shares differing opinions and sparks separate emotions. You are the poet now, what does it mean to you?

Let me know if I made you think! Leave a comment below.

Please share my content if you appreciated it.

-Cale Montoya (01/05/24)