Nuclear Summer

In honor of the sun-blasted hell that is summer in Phoenix:

Atomic blast; white light explodes.
Nuclear summer.

Spiny Saguaros arms beseeching
Mercy.

Sad doves on the ground hang their heads.

Pavement shimmers and sears.
Streets empty.

Plants shrivel in cracked earth.
Leafy flesh drops off.

Snakes and small creatures hide
in their holes.

Mushroom clouds with no rain.
Dust detonation.

Mutant black bugs emerge.
Fly and die, legs up.

Cicada chorus sings of doom.
A winged death rattle.

A cloud tear drops, then disappears.

A flash of light in dark sky.
Distant rumble, then silence.

A lizard skitters across a hot block fence.

Oven wind blows circles of devil dirt.

Dirty grey, distant mountains.
Desert city of hell.

Nuclear summer.

I AM SICK OF SUMMER

This is the worst part of summer in the desert. The earth is heated up from baking in the sun for months. The air is dry enough to heat up past 110 degrees, but it's not dry enough to cool off at night. August has that special combination that makes the heat more miserable than at other times in the summer. A week ago the temperature reached 117 degrees. I live in a desert and know it gets hot, but enough is enough.

                      I AM SICK OF SUMMER

Sweat. 

June denial. It’s not so bad. Cool mornings. Deluded reality. Thermometers gleefully bursts past 115 degrees, in a fit of spite. Dragon’s morning breath.

Plants shrivel in the outdoor oven and reach; plaintive arms to the sky. Desperate for relief.

The parched earth sighs.

White, blinding light sears the skin. Dogs pant, their heads droop.

Dripping sweat.

July despair. Heavy, stifling,  never ending suffocation. A.C. runs nonstop and swallows money.

Luscious, fat moisture of bloated cotton puff clouds entice; then vanish.

Gargantuan brown swirls of dust tentacles howl in. Lightning flares. Thunder rumbles. Trees blow over. A tornado of dead leaves. No rain.

Giant bugs stumble; meander aimlessly, confused.

Snakes hide. Lizards flee.

Dripping, sweaty sweat.

August disgust. Dispirited souls. Time stops in purgatory. Life is pointless. Outside tasks are too much effort. Monster heat feeds on human energy.

The sky rumbles and urinates.
The air cools, briefly bearable. Toads emerge from their holes.
A vicious sun re-asserts control.

Less sweat.

September hope. Summer loosens its grip, but still holds on. The glare wanes. Air softens. Summer birds leave, flying off to gentler climes.

Two months more and summer’s gone.

I can’t wait.

Turkey Bacon

Because I am losing my mind a little with ironman training in the heat and stress in general, I wonder about random weird items like pigeons in parking lots and turkey bacon:

Never had hooves nor snout.

But beak and feathers.
Flesh in pinkish brown straight line striations.
Not turkey, not bacon.
Alien creation.

Real bacon-- random fat-laden pork meat formations.

A Daliesque mockery.
The striped plasticized slice.

"Mechanically separated turkey, water. salt, sugar, seasoning, turkey meat,...
Smoked and cured dark and white turkey”
The whole turkey?

“Chopped and formed” in a machine?
Bones, beak, gizzard, brains, feet?

Bacon -- mere pork belly.

No shrinkage or color change when cooked.
Vaguely tastes like a chewy Canadian bacon.

Bacon--shrinks by half. Delicious!

It seemed like a good idea at the time.
A “healthy” piece of cardboard.

Give me crispy, smokey, fatty, bacon.

Parking Lot Pigeon



Denizen of the Parking Lot
















Occasionally, my mind goes off on a tangent, especially when I am bored. Grocery shopping will do that to me. I was inspired to write this poem when I saw this humble creature.

He wanders among the cars.

Head bobbing.

Grocery store parking lot.
Bird feet oblivious to the
hot, black cracked, asphalt baking
in the sun-blasted 110 degrees.

He pecks at a torn hamburger wrapper,
discarded and forgotten.
French fry eaten, he ambles on
among the grocery carts.

Inside, shelves full of food; outside only crumbs.
His coat of feathers is a unharmonious collage of hideous colors.
He struts unfazed by his ugly .
Beady dull eyes regard the world.

Does he feel? Is he happy?
Mere existence only numb
eating, pooping, mating?

People walk by, unseeing.
He watches.
Mothers, babies, construction workers, old people in motorized carts.
Fat people, uniformed students, clerks in aprons.
They come, then leave with bags.
He is a phantom.

He hops onto a truck;
deposits a large, wet, white mound,

Feathers whoosh in flight.
He is gone.

Valentine's Poem

ODE TO VALENTINE’S DAY

Hearts and flowers aren’t my friends anymore
They gnaw on my soul.
Feeding on lies and betrayal.
Little rat teeth, their maggoty bodies grow fat.
Squirming.

The bloated corpse of Romance regards me
Empty eye sockets that never saw.
Hanging bits of flesh
Vultures nibble
The future is unknown. Will Romance arise again anew?

I stab Cupid with his own arrow, disemboweling angel flesh.
It trembles in death throes. The promise of love dead.
Feathers of wings scattered on the ground.

I fling both corpses over the cliff.
The vultures scream out into the cloudless blue sky.
Circling in the air and then pouncing once more to feed.
On despair.
The stench is gone.
The pain is dulled.
I walk away.

I rarely read poetry, let alone write it. But my irritation over the "holiday" inspired me to write this poem. I was tired of reading other peoples' sappy sentiments about Valentine's Day. Romance? None in my life.

So, while riding my bike, I thought of what images would be the most vile to counteract the claptrap that I was reading on Facebook, seeing on television and hearing on the radio. My mind was so immersed in images of death and decay that I barely noticed that I was training.

It turned out that writing this poem was wonderfully cathartic. My depression about being alone was eased. I could express the deep pain I felt in an acceptable manner. The words seemed to come out of nowhere. The darkness of the images surprised me. It was different from my usual blog writing in that it was freer and more raw emotionally.

Best of all I could immediately kill off Cupid without the effort of developing a story. I wrote a short story about a murder and it took me months to figure out how he would be killed and who would do it. In a poem, Cupid can be disemboweled in a single sentence. It's utterly wonderful. It takes whining to whole new and violent level.

I am going to visit this medium again. The range of subjects is endless. Divorce, depression, triathlons, loneliness, empty nest? Or maybe a Christmas poem, though disemboweling Santa might be a little too much. Reindeer meat?