The rains come now, every day, at four.
They tell me that you will be flying in soon,
for a wedding which we were to attend
together, stealing kisses inbetween
vows spoken and lost in the humid air
on empty ears. I will not be there, heat
and your presence are just too much for me
at the end of June, water threatening
with clockwork accuracy, clouds swooning
and black in the too blue sky, and hanging
thunderheads high, glinting golden shadows,
foreshadowing the lightning that will come.
The “wel” has worn off of my door’s welcome
mat. Blunt, it is no longer a sign for
greeting, it is just a command hanging
weak above the ground, its purpose swooning
and pale, neither pleasant nor threatening,
its form no more noticed than a shadow’s
presence or the strong angels that attend
to a lonely child dying far too soon.
The solitude of “come” has escaped me
for months, I am sure, eyes watching the air
and the ground and all things that are between
them, missing detail lost in the Summer’s heat.
All things are limp in Summer’s virgin heat,
humid and stained, waiting for the rain to come,
watching the battle of cold and hot air
waiting to pour the ocean over me,
the water that will always come soon, soon
now, clouds gathering to explode between
the motion of slow moving hands hanging
on expressionless faces screaming four!
for no one to hear, no ear to attend
to the faces’ persistent threatening,
only old folks caught by the heat, swooning
in wheelchairs under thunderclouds’ shadows.
The omnipresence of dying shadows
the joy of summer and fuels its thick heat
with invisible quick hands threatening
the feeble and those who do not attend
to the fiery fingers that are for
the swift strangulation and slow swooning
of creatures trapped in the vicious hot air
that swelters and swirls before the rains come,
tumid and turbulent waters hanging
in the sky, dropping in puddles that soon
form hot and steamy mirrors before me
that slow the air and rain and all between.
The music of thunderclaps dies inbetween
the howling of wind and lightning’s shadows,
that darken and spark the Earth that will soon
come alive with blazing blue tongues hanging,
dropping gold from the skies to overcome
the air’s silence and explode before me,
shrapnel and splinters of wood threatening
to tear my face and burn me with Hell’s heat,
that boils oceans and evaporates air;
glory to make a sinner kneel before
the Almighty, repent and attend
to all his wrongdoings before swooning
in the presence of God, before swooning
and falling into the abyss between
the answers to who am I? and what for?
The thundering dies in the thickness of air,
even its greatness trapped in greater heat,
where exhaustion and hopelessness attend
each cell of existence. The storm is soon
in coming. The mountainous sheet shadows
the Earth in crisp midnight blue, threatening
perpetual dark where no light will come
unless it comes from golden cracks hanging
deadly in the air that hangs above me.
For now, there is no lightning above me,
no fiery flashes, only swooning
clouds revolving around the storm to come,
spinning mist in an empty threatening,
bending the light into hollow shadows
that leave the feeling of a crisp hanging
in the air as hour hands approach four.
In the blue electric instants between
calm and storm the tree branches rattle; soon
now there will be an end to all this heat,
a cool rush will fall through the oven air;
be quiet, let your ears and heart attend
to the music of changing, let them attend
to the changing of the air; you and me
say the trees, we will outlive June’s fresh heat,
we will be revived by Winter, so soon,
so soon now, they whisper soft, inbetween
gusts of wind, cracks of wood, and whirling air;
the clouds creep up, warning of rain to come,
promising water; the trees are swooning
and swaying in anticipation for
the lifeflow that falls from living shadows,
bringing the fire that is threatening
always the burning of branches hanging
high and low, where souls were once left hanging,
rituals that everyone would attend
but where none would walk out of the shadows;
a limp body with nothing to show for
and ladies turning their heads and swooning
and a thousand empty trees threatening
doom and death in the stifling Summer heat;
all these ancient shadows pass before me,
spaced among the flashes of light, they come,
reminding me of those who came between
the present and a past that much too soon
revives itself in the heavy, hot air
of Florida. The Southland’s Springtime air,
full of life, slowly gives way to hungry
Summer skies that oscillate wide between
the clear blue mornings and the storms that come
every evening, mechanically, like me,
brooding over love slipped away more soon
than I had wished to the soft shadows
of my soft mind where memories attend
masquerades of loss in the Summer heat;
these vast skies, with their dark clouds swooning,
shift into vehemence as nearer four
the sun drifts, into the sky threatening
to set the world ablaze and threatening
to trap forever the sea in the air,
to keep clouds swirling and the Earth swooning,
wilting, and limpid in impossible heat,
where all of the demons of Hell attend
to the torture of every creature for
their own pleasure. In the moments between
calm and storm all the colors grow hungry,
eating the air and devouring shadows;
they grow bold, and bright enough to blind me,
their volume screams of the tempest to come,
of the flood waters that will explode soon
over everything. It will all fall soon,
with thunderhead clouds huge and threatening,
overbearing the Earth, covering me,
and blanketing the sun with great shadows,
shielding its rays from the full and hungry,
from the poor and rich, the shunned and welcome;
all of them will be covered in swooning
swirls of water cascading from the air,
splashing in puddles that form inbetween
gaps of stone and earth where bugs that attend
to daily business are jolted by heat
and wet and storm each afternoon at four.
Four days now, and you will be coming, soon
enough to attend to matters between
the marriage of the Spring air to June’s heat
and a sulking me, no more threatening
than a swooning child. As the hungry
sky explodes all of memory’s shadows come.
Burlesque Press 