Fresh Green Vegetables

Hot days, warm nights, dew point elevated--
perspiration eager.  Air conditioning kaput,
repair pending (I am on the Lennox list.)
It’s like I’m waiting on the fringes
of the city, the sun so close at hand,
the air a kind of kiln exhalation,
my hair thin kindling.
Lips raw, cracked, yet
no lip balm to assuage them.
I seek storm cellars like a mole
burned on paws by
lit matches. I am my own sauna,
so I must rise above this misery and
pretend a glacier awaits where I
can shush on down, whoop away
any flat-footed Emperor Penguins
who may be craving krill or
crayfish in schools--yes, that is it;
I shall mind-dive into the main,
into the sea so vast because the mind
is vast (oh, convoluted, gelatinous
mass!) residing leisure-like
behind my eyes, skull-housed
allowing me to be me.
Imagination, power, vigor;
a mitigator of heat surround,
of atmospheric closeness which
constricts like a fist...oppression.
AC ineffective.  Noise--no comfort.
Like a politician on the stump
blowing hot air, yet acting cool.
Thus I will act--yea, I shall enter
stage left, and mull the heat
awhile, then idle on as neural
pathways allow, and climb
Mount Everest with a Sherpa
or two, and plant a flag in
eon’s-old ice, and think
that I, too, am cool
as a cucumber.


40 Lines 
Writer’s Cramp Winner
5-28-16