Through the white, beating Texan heat,
water towers cry out titles
high above the flat land
where kids from the roadside houses
run around in stained tank tops,
dreaming of their own names up there.
The long and burnt grass cuts their ankles
and the dry cement scrapes their feet.
The midday ritual begins in a racing circle
raising dust over the roofs and into the shy afternoon.
Around 5, the roadside families reunite
in front of their houses to watch the daily traffic jam
and observe the variety of faces through the glass windows,
which after a short while do not seem to vary at all.
But today, something else had their full attention.
The sky was never seen this low and the clouds
​turned a shade of black
so dark as to be almost green,
so the eldest women on that single row of houses
declared bad omen. The next early morning,
the closest water tower laid gravely against the ground.
Already, a small boy had climbed on top of the tank,
soles bleeding, and waving
​his shirt into the wide clear sky.

©2018 Alex Bex - www.alexbex.net

We burn like meteors:
Hot, fast, and bright
Screaming through the atmosphere
Hearts afire, souls alight
Each trip
One small skip for heart,
One giant leap for meteorite.

But there are two inevitabilities:
Time, and with it, gravity.

We break apart
Losing light
We extinguish
Losing sight
But after it's over -
After you're gone
I'm still
Euphoric.
High.

Replays shooting through my mind -
I'm starting to suffocate on oxygen.

Then I desperately search
For a laugh, or a sound,
Hoping a new voyage
Soon will be found
Grasping at wind
All the way down
Just a stone in thin air
Plummeting to the ground.

The blackberries on the railway path are ripe.
  The woodland birds are quick to take their share,
while purple fingers pick amongst the hype
  and rabbits hop in the hedgerow somewhere.
A cool wind spirals, rustling fallen leaves,
  carrying distant cries along its way
and bending the amber-tinged tips of trees.
  The sound of summer joys are in decay.
They soften, becoming calmer, quiet,
  like tired eyes in need of time to sleep.
There are some feelings I cannot forget
  and memories I will forever keep.
Meet me along the railway path, my dear,
  to breathe the mellow, autumn atmosphere.

I wake up. Quiet. The sheets beside me are cold. The sun shines trough the dewy windows. I look down at my brown knees. The nail polish on my toes is falling off. I close my eyes for a second and open them again. I leave my bed and look myself in the mirror. My eyes are as blue as the ocean, and I’ve got freckles on my nose. My lips are dry, so I wet them with my tongue. I can feel the warmth from the sun on my thighs. It’s silent.
     My mother enters the room.
     “Who?” she asks.
     “I don’t know” I answer. She leaves.
     I look at myself in the mirror again. I look pretty, with my tan skin as a contrast to my blue eyes. An eyelash has fallen off and landed on my cheek, but I don’t remove it. I look away, at the sun. It shines again today. I miss the ocean.

It was an atmosphere
It was an oxygen mixed with southern fog
Southpaw gloves tied in sailor knots
Waves of golden grains in ocean wind
The rolling hills behind property lines

It was the question you asked
not with words but in the way you breathed against the window glass
as I leaned against your Corolla
And we sang under the overpass

It was graffiti
It was graffiti
It was the cavernous concrete cats with purple hair and acid wash jean jackets
melting the light of their city's street lamps into the obsidian void of moistened pavement

It was the way the reverb spread the major seventh across the sky with burnt orange cascading into the violet of the minor ninth
which reminds me of crickets and summer nights (and violins and cellos and midwestern jazz bars)
and how bar chords are a guitarists way of flipping off a crowd-
surfing the web for an answer to why I'm still single-
handedly the handsomest man in my car currently.

It's the cloth in my empty passenger seat
soaking up the air of my A/C heat
and the scent of the soil spilt from the succulent I was given at a wedding last fall
and now I don't know if my trunk will ever smell clean at all

But I'll let this night be interstellar
I'll take a bath in the Big Dipper and write you a letter about Orion's Belt
or how I miss the stars sparkling in your eyes making contact with the E.T. in me.

Phone me home, darling.
I'm lost at sea.

-W.J. Thompson

It was an atmosphere.
It was an atmosphere.
It was oxygen mixed with southern fog,
Southpaw gloves tied in sailor knots,
Waves of golden grains in ocean wind,
The rolling hills behind property lines.

It was the question you asked,
It was the question you asked,
Not with words but in the way you breathed against the window glass,
While I leaned against your Corolla,
And we sang under the overpass.

It was graffiti,
It was graffiti.
It was the cavernous concrete cats with purple
hair and acid wash jean jackets,
Melting the light of their city's street lamps into the obsidian void of moistened pavement.

It was the way the reverb spread the major 7th across the sky with burnt orange cascading into the violet of the minor 9th which reminds me of crickets and summer nights (and violins and cellos and midwestern jazz bars), and how bar chords are a guitarists way of flipping off a crowd,
Surfing the web for an answer to why I'm still single-
handedly the handsomest man in my car currently.

It's the cloth in my empty passenger seat,
soaking up the air of my A/C heat.
And the scent of the soil spilt from the succulent I was given at a wedding last fall,
And now I don't know if my trunk will ever smell clean at all.
It was how my energy dripped away into the floods of San Jose,
And how her eyes began to sink into her iPhone 7's screen.
It's in how I long for prolonged eye contact,
It's in how close the answer is but never slips,
I'm not interested in the electric work of fingertips,
I'm interested in connection.

I believed I was immune, invincible;
  to the scorching heat of your surface.
  That I wouldn't be burned up or
  consumed by the fires you stoke.

I was not strong enough to endure
  and turned to crystallized glass
  and fell into your atmosphere,
  shattering into sparkles of dust.

I fell apart in your atmosphere,
  shattered like a comet across
  the scorched plains of your
  heart and soul.

& in the darkness of your being
  I look up to your skies and I
  see your Aurora Borealis &
  I know everything is okay...