Once again I'm lost
     Big Billboard  Ronald McDonald
tells me to embrace summer but how
          
           with the air con in its death throes + baking tar breath.

              In the back with heat stroke + around
                             thoughts
                     mixed

                       **** your seatbelt I'm decomposing

             Read too much Burroughs
             Read too much Fear and        
             Loathing
+ all I can think about are mistakes and exes

At a stroke I feel the heat
Winding pulse of electricity
Beneath me I feel grounded, thunderstruck
My love abounded
So wherefore am I bound?

To tread lonely is no cause for fanfare sound
And yet to know warmth is to know bitter lacking
For in the lean times when friends seem far away
All I can feel is that maybe I was not good enough

At a stroke I banish these thoughts
But I am ill prepared to walk
The twisting thread, the tightrope-drop
And alack, I curse that I should be forgot

I hate that I should have to fight
The inner me with all my might
Who at a whim should change his coat
That in the shade I suffer'd stroke.

Nick

our kisses were as soft as our hearts & this must be the seed of all that came thereafter,
and all that didn't see light outside my mind.

perhaps our soft hearts led to my current introspection and my disposition when it comes to
pens, papers,
and all that lies
between them in truth,
in confessions by
soft tongues in shaky lips in scattered sheets in paling cheeks and blushing eyes,
in that which lies
between thought and its expression,
between brutal honesty in the heat of an oncoming summer,
in mosquito bites and my sweet blood which attracts this
violence, this heatstroke
sunshine;
it is divine,
like we imagined,

it is hectic like we desired,
it is nonsense and is madness and knows no explanation other than our
awkward silence,
our differences in imagined futures,
our various degrees of love/hate passive-aggressive
actions and feelings and resentments and appreciations;

we both are optimistic but you believe in that which counters my belief and it is
strange and unexpected and before you,
i needed someone,

and after you,
i need to be alone

Heatstroke
By
Jude Kyrie*

The naked sun sets the world on fire.
A scalded sky like a funeral pyre.
No rain in sight as the heat goes higher
Like musical notes.
Sit the birds on the telephone wire

No peace for me no cool blue moon.
No respite from their crazy tune
The chirping crows turn the volume higher.
The birds are notes on the telephone wire

That awful hurdy-gurdy sound
Makes my head spin round and round
If I had a gun I would surely fire
At those infernal birds
upon the telephone wire.

will you love me?
will you think of me next sunday evening
when the newspapers are gossiping together on your front porch
as i birth life into the rose buds growing six feet above me?
my darling, you are the georgia sun

and i loved you even before i felt
the luminescent fingers of god
sifting through the morning dew
beckoning my every root and stem
to embrace your september glare above the fertile darlington soil.
will you love me? will you love me then?

i wake up to your warm gaze upon the pink hues of my blistered skin.
i am alive and, with my finger, i trace the poison ivy
that has managed to make itself a home in these cobblestone ravines.
the grooves in the path cling to the soles of my shoes as they try and change my mind
but every sunday afternoon your remnants in the ashtray tempt me closer
i stand on the edge and etch saltwater confessions into the dying moss below me—
your memory creeps up behind me and pushes me off the bridge.

it's always sunny in darlington

there is a girl made of stardust
and ocean salt, breathing static
into the night sky.
her love, if tended to
with patient hands, would
grow like wild roses across
the trellises of your heart.

she is not born of men;
but a child of luna,
sweet mother.
she is a breeze in July
softly rustling your hair
and the plague of
heatstroke and withered
tongues that swiftly follows.
her touch lingers into
the winter solstice.

she is the wave of sorrow
sweeping over your bones
and the light in your eyes
shining with leftover love;
a shadow dressed in white,
a consummation of grief.

she is a wallflower, a habitual
offender to the gods.
she will nurture you like an infant
and then leave you on your knees,
gasping for redemption.

woke up 2pm this morning
squandered all the afternoon
building magic fortresses, high on rainbow rock
til my eyes got sore and i got dizzy
from a sunny, golden-yellow glare
opened up the window, let in the draft
let in the air

(and risked pneumonia)

and I started thinking clearly then,
I started thinking when,
the deathly cold, cursed, no-remove,
fresh air got to my brain
and i sat there by the window
kept it open, 'spite the wind and rain
just following my train
of thought

(and risked pneumonia)

i felt that neither ice nor fire can do me harm
but why is it right now i feel too cold
yet still too warm
feel like a fire can freeze me,
and a breeze may bring me heatstroke,
feels like some sick ******* joke

but i started thinking clearly then,
i started thinking clearly when
my temperature went down
and i got to thinking,
and looking back
to before cold felt warm

and it came to me, i realized...

(i didnt catch pneumonia)

In the heat of summer,
The cuckoo sits on the branch and calls-
"Eyes gone", "Eyes gone"
In this heat, life is terrifying-
Realizing this, the wayfarer decided to leave home.

How the branches of the tree are stunted-
There is no wind,
Lazily, the shepherd gave the body to relax,
In the shade of a tree, holding his flute-
This summer, the scene seems to be chirping.

Couldn't bear the heatstroke, though
The beggar is returning door to door-
The bored bard seeks to find peace in cloudless sky
Lean body, walking on the edge of an unknown village.

Dry day lean on the lap of evening
Forget the weariness in the touch of late night dream.

Feeling hot and
cold water's not doing the trick
Feeling sick with the heat but
I won't let it beat me,defraud and or
cheat me
I'm getting a fan to fan me,to cool me and
fool me into believing
I'm living the dream,
feeling hot won't then seem
so bad.
In the bath with a sponge
I take one more plunge and the
duck gives a look like you wouldn't
believe,
but I do.