Hot will End.

...
The amber/bright light sits hovering above,
pushing Autumn away.
Autumn that wants to be here.
It showed up last week or so,
but Summer doesn't move out so easily.

Summer sits right down in the backyard
and says, "Listen to me, you.
The sun's not done."

Heavy, like a forest fire without smoke,
as with too many blankets at night when
you're cold at first,
but later the breathing is thick,
and no windows open for a breeze,
and finally does the humid stink
drive you up and out
to the evening star layer.

Craning your neck just to the cool, glittering black,
the tilt just right for warm weather turning cooler,
the constellations tipping with the season.

Currently that tilting sun smothers in the sky.
Just for a few more days until
October finalizes the heat stroke.

Inevitable.


Teasing and joking sunlight,
in a Monty Python skit,
hints at goodbye.
We lose the light, the temperature,


the sweat,
the quiet,

ultimately to the snap sound
of cold damp Fall.

...

What is square?

...
If love is round, what is square?
...
Is square sort of an opposite thing
like esteem and disgust?
...
What is disapproval, anyway?
And what shape is shame?
...
Some minds see numbers in color;
letters, too.
Some special souls' emotions
have a special smell or light.
Somewhere in those brains
synapses for ideas pulse with shapes.
...
That square protestant glare,
that look,
that stare from over there to here,
has sharp edges and corners
like an old fashioned triangular ruler
before electronic scientific calculators,
before cell phones on silent/vibrate.

I wince, buckled this tight;
my eyes can't see through the smoke.
Smoke from the heat
or smoke from an over-fueled hot rod?
Ultimately, it's steamed, blurry wet eyes.
...
Get out,
go home,
drink coffee,
don't think, I think.
...
And I do.
Until he says, "How's work?"
It's that bad.
Thinking is the trap, so don't do it.
...
Robotically I push red barns across my table.

Cut out farm animals.
Color and cut.
Color and cut.
And write your name on the back.
...
Robotically repeat:
"Clean up and sit down."
"Clean up and line up."
...
It's lunch recess in the high 90's
so we'll all faint in the heat;
so line up and shut up
while smoke rises from the asphalt.

Will you not escape today?
...
More fool you.
...