Summer Claustrophobia

[rejectomorph]

A nice breeze has come up this afternoon, which is great as long as no brush fires get started. I don't smell any smoke, so it's probably safe. It's pleasant to sit outside in the shade and listen to the leaves rustling and watch the cirrus clouds drift. I've seen a few hummingbirds, but there aren't very many insects flying about. The poor spiders are going to starve.

I probably won't starve, nor will I have to cook, as I have stuff to make sandwiches with. If I stay in the house too long I might get dehydrated, though, as it is still way too hot in here. I'm eager to get back outdoors and feel that breeze pulling the heat out of my skin.




Sunday Verse

Early Show

by Kevin Young


Here even the darkness
is watered down —

Shades drawn
won't keep out dawn,

Won't bring me sleep
or us any closer —

The gap in our pushed-together
twin beds grows wider.

Regret a green thing
all morning I been

Watering — not that
it needs it —

Even untended my mind
weed-filled, wild.

Nothing wakes him —
not the truck's hum

Backing up, or the woman
who knocks loud, trading

The hotel's ghostly towels
but letting the sheets

Stay unchanged.

Lunchtime,
the adultery hour —

The flophouse fills
with couples telling

Work they need
an extra hour

For the doctor —
you can hear them in the hall

Practicing coughs
& examining each

Other's tonsils. Ah —

If despair had a sound
it would be: DO NOT DISTURB.

If despair has a sound
it's the muffled, raised

Voices of the pair next door
who've lived here

In One-Star Manor forever
yet still pay by the week

— Love's an iffy lease —

Or worse may be
the sharp silence

That follows every fight.
While the secretaries

& files clerks & junior
execs undress —

Trade their shorthand kisses —

I run what HOT
is left (though hard

To know, marked COLD)
till I steam the mirrors

Like car windows
in a prom's parking lot

& I can't see myself.

Despair,
I know, is the ham radio

On low, crackling
like rain & announcing

Today's game
has been called — a first —

On account of too much sun.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

Wow, that last sentence of the poem is a doozy. Wow.

Hope there are no fires near you! Meanwhile, over the Cascades, Washington is on fire. It's scary.

[rejectomorph]

As I never watch news on television and no longer get a newspaper, I don't know what's happening until I see it on the Internet or somebody tells me about it (unless it's on the Daily Show or Colbert, of course.) I didn't even know Washington was on fire until my sister told me about it yesterday afternoon.

I guess now that California is getting Mexico's weather, Washington is stuck with California's weather (and wildfires.) I hope we don't ultimately have to move to Alaska. I hate the thought of having Sarah Palin as a neighbor.

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

What an awful thought. She's a terrible human being.