It's cold for August, we say, hiding in air conditioned
negative pressure controlled light high rise rooms;
"Be good", my mother used to say, "or they'll take you
to the 9th floor of Ruby", except now you're here:
After having done nothing so crazy that I can notice
as might merit the magnitude of our current incarceration.

But August is like that, hot or cold, and cruel all the same:
It runs past us before we notice, shoving us clumsily away
from the salvific summer and into the scorching one, subtly
insinuating one's whole life has been prelude to hellfire;
It reminds us what an apex feels like when it's seen
from the wrong side, bitterly recalling greener grasses.

We haven't the fortitude for all this sweat–we who're made
of blood & bones, all full of fat & sinew and circumspection–
I might say we're not august enough for August, if I were
trying to be clever, which, so far it's seemed, has served
as a milky, generally inadequate substitute for real intelligence.

There's no time now, a supermajority of months behind, to vote
for a better life, notwithstanding November's fine shadow or
October's spectral quietude, or the laborious catharthis
of September rains. No. It's time to get ripe. It's time to take
the yellow bus to school and back home. It's time to sweat it out
while we still can.