I am half-awake in the August rain,
the last strain of summer squeezed
into my glass and cooled with ice.

It is nice. To be up this early with
the morning news, Palestinians and
Jews at war over berries and wheat

in the broken streets of Gaza.
The cats are sleeping on the suite,
ears pinned up for a flash of sound

or stench of meat. My brother is
planning his moves for the future
against the ways I have failed in the past.

I have been half-asleep in debt and
addiction. I have buried myself in a
dream of words; into worlds of

all-talk and no action. I am no longer
a fraction of beer bottles and ashtrays,
fantasies of easy lays, or notebooks left

incomplete and full of cancer fears.
They are in tears; brown-skinned and
forgotten rights, a desolation site

of ground-zeros and a desperate fight
for life. Depleted uranium laces lungs,
as well-versed tongues in heavy suits

kiss the shoes of the corporate brutes.
As empathy trickles down in political
verse, a hypnagogic curse for liberal thought

and consciousness. They are forecasting
sorrow as the sun comes up, to detach
from our Earth, and the late summer rain.