Join us every Monday evening for drinks at the Daily Kos community political poetry club. Drop by and speak your mind in rhyme or blank verse. Poetry is always welcome in the comments. Let’s use language to scream our passion to the world. Bongos, berets and turtle neck sweaters are optional. The keypad is mightier than the sword.
As I write this diary intoduction two weeks or so before the posting date, the temperature outside is 103 degrees, with a heat index of 115. I wish I had an indoor thermometer, because it is easily well into the mid-80s in here, but I would like to know for sure. Maybe it’s higher. We have two AC window units set to 78 and a box fan for this apartment. The walls are mostly thick masonry, but they are not enough to keep this kind of heat out. This heat, like some kind of insidious presence, wants in.
Meanwhile, this summer’s massive heatwaves are no fluke of weather. This is the preface to our future.
About this week’s offerings:
Summer Oh Five (2005)
I wrote this during our first summer living in Philadelphia’s Center City, surrounded by bricks baking in cement ovens. I remember the unfortunate smell wafting into our third floor windows during those first hot summer nights. I thought it was sweat, stinky sweat. But it was a combination of grease from out the back doors of South Street restaurants, and spilled beer sizzling between the cracks of broken glass on sidewalks. Meanwhile, the newspapers had nothing concrete to say about the wars.
Summer in this City (July 2011)
This haiku chain was written between late June and early July, weeks before the worst heatwave hit. This is the typical Philly summer to me. Those that can afford to, get out of town. The rest of us cope.
Ankhiale’s Lament (July 2011)
Going through my own personal heatwave, while Mother Earth is doing her best to regulate her own temperature.
Burning (July 2011)
Somewhere else many years ago I awoke in my crib to a room on fire.
Heat (August 2011)
Random dire musings on the future that is now here.
—
Summer Oh Five
Newspaper pages blowing into the street
They toss and they turn in a lame duck retreat
with nothing to say to the chorus of sheep
what they call information is so incomplete
The collective sweat of every soul in the city comes wafting up
with a spiral of exhaust thickening the suffocating air
Why would anybody want to be here?
Squirrel with a rabbit tail
running under cars
bobtail squirrel scurrying
to the old graveyard
Overcrowded ears are curling into shells
funneling sirens in a piercing hell
the sheets of syndication, they won’t tell
periodically blank as they blanket the well
Heat melting, dripping down, smothering rooftops with a salty coating
that withers in the hazy daytime longing for something discreet
lost behind the times in blocks of concrete
Squirrel with a rabbit tail
running under cars
bobtail squirrel scurrying
to the old graveyard
—
Summer in this City
a haiku chain of eight
Step outside the door
the stifling hallway festers
the street is much worse
Reflecting sunlight
glares in the line of eyesight
whole trees are wilting
How long can I go
without taking a safe breath
behind bus exhaust
My skull heating up
like a feverish nightmare
headache inducing
A pressure cooker
screaming; release me from this
convection oven
Buildings are melting
into sweltering shelter
with minimal shade
This heatwave betrays
evaporative systems
set only to scorch
The searing dog days
of urban torridity
still early summer
—
Ankhiale’s Lament
There is a fever
some kind of pounding pressure
sharpened knives
poised to break a sweat
slice a river
into an ancient glacier
that is now dying
to melt
Heat ascending
and gaining altitude
steaming into upper latitudes
dripping torrid condensation
producing night sweats
wake up soaking wet
those heart palpitations
choke like coughing toxic fumes
repeatedly
Upper troposphere
struggling to make sense
of what on earth is going on
way the hell down here
surface temperatures
struggling for balance
compressions flowing
then tripping over
hormonal waves
of liquid density
Precipitation
gathering in response
intensifies itself
as if to cool
to chill the fire
a temporary cold front
those record-setting blizzards
that soon move on
proving nothing
besides the fact
the system has officially
gone haywire
Patterns unraveling
in desperate attempts
to regulate themselves
they fall apart
and warm unchecked
into a rising spiral
a broken shell
shattered
by this unrelenting surf
—
Burning
Animals in alleys
yowling with desire
an overheated persistence
this animated choir
windows slamming shut
to lock in loads of ire
somewhere else another state
is wallowing in fire
Burning forests in the mountains
burning grasses on the plains
burning with embarrassment
burning up with shame
burning chile on the tongue
wiping tears from burning eyes
somewhere else they’re lining up
for burning pots of rice
Picking through the refuse piles
burning incinerator trash
burning fields of dying crops
skies filling up with ash
somewhere else another time
they were turning up the gas
burning bodies in crematoriums
in concentration camps
Burning crosses in the front yard
burning churches in the south
shaking empty words from pamphlets
acidic hate from spittled mouth
burning with mindless illogic
as the temperature surely spikes
somewhere else way over there
it’s time to go on strike
Buried alive under hideous debt
burning through retirement savings
burning with ravenous greed
bankers satisfy their cravings
somewhere else that we recall
were the powerful badly behaving
burning villages with napalm
that ill-conceived immolating
Burning up with fever
burning books in sacrifice
volcanoes offer magma
breaking through the ice
somewhere else is getting closer
when glaciers slide into the sea
from the ruins of ancient creatures
burning into relentless heat
—
Heat
And when the days slow down
and when the days grow long
stretched to the limit
like old rubber bands
before they go snap across the room
the days that collect like dust in the corners
from a hallway full of doors
each one shut
From the days of drunken forests
tipsy and fallen over
petrified by circumstances
even they
are not old enough
to understand
Ten million acres of monoculture
at a minimum
pale ochre yellow dead
and dying
crisp
under a relentless sun
that is trying to keep us cool
the only way it knows how
Famines caused by drought
and amplified
by political
and religious obstinance
crops fail
water becomes salinated
ice becomes water
land becomes sea
rinse, repeat and release
methane
And when the days move along
collecting into years
as they will
we become desperate
to somehow extricate ourselves
from the searing clutches
of excessive heat
—
All poems above ©2011, Alexandria Levin