Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com


                                     August is a Yellow Flame


                          “That August was like a yellow flame”

                    Anna Ahkmatova, 1917 / Anno Domini MCMXXI /
                                       III. The Voice of Memory


This August is indeed like a yellow flame
Death writhes among brown-burnt withering leaves
The grass is as sere as Macbeth’s acrid soul
And garden hoses drip in futility

The sun-bleached visage of Ozymandias
Might frown upon this blighted desert wrack
For not unlike the Ancient Mariner’s ghostly crew
The usages of summer drop and decay

But look!

But look above the last barren clouds in the west -
A tiny sliver of the promising moon

comet Swift-Tuttle
Perseid meteor show
shooting star wishes






Mark Toney ©️ 2023

Time should have been enough
Time and space and ignoring you
But I can't.

Ignoring you is like holding my breath
A challenge, possible until it inevitably isn't.
I can't.

Your hair is longer but your eyes are the same.
Your smile is quieter but you stand taller now,
laugh louder.

I wrote you a letter, and I want to send it.
I want to stamp it and send it away from me and to you
But I can't.

I can't let myself go, that small secret.
I can't.

My throat is heavy with August’s sorrows
I sit by the shore and wait for the weakest waves
to drown my little feet — I  stagger over them like a clumsy giant.
But it’s seaborne sadness wraps, a constant, unrelenting embrace
like a mother’s grief,
a gentle creature’s death,
a rabid dog feasting on a poor, meatless bone.
I am alive — so cruelly alive for it all
as it falls

down my throat, down my chest like a child’s pained whisper.
My body is heavy with August’s weight as I retire to my filthy bed
and hold myself.

Cold are the nights in their quiet,
lackadaisical, taunting hours.

Come now, September. Come, kindly, if you please;
sweep me away into a million, invisible dust particles
suspended

under clueless, flickering lights.

I name all of my lovers after months now
and all roads lead to August and
the Roman cities we’ve burned —
how she walked on crumbling streets as I held the matches —
this poem is a page for burning at its tip:
a lone match, scalding — a firelit kiss
but the flames have always been a hypnotic sight
like a woman perched in your sunlit bed —
her hair, red as flames licking my neck,
red as love that bleeds on itself;
it leaves a stain on pretty things.

Now her skin has silk sheets burning away
like banners in a Roman cathedral,
her half-breath kisses, dying — now embers,
tainting my dress black where her lips had staked a claim.
Now her touch is wildfire crawling on my skin
and I am a wounded doe — waiting. waiting.
waiting.


The only world I know burns to the ground
before my very eyes
and we are no phoenixes, darling; all we do is burn.

the days won’t slow
the nights won’t drag
they move too quickly
it’s all too fast

i’ve always hated august
her grip
on my arm
her drinks
in my bar
her laughs
so far
away
but i hear them
echoing off the walls
of the barn
in this particular
part
of the season.
it’s starting to
feel like treason.
i give so much love
lying in
summer’s arms
i hold her like
a three million
dollar diamond ring
and i give her everything.
she leaves me broken
and shattered
likewise the mad hatter
and i collect her
fragments like a good
little child.
a good little
disciplined child.
she discards the wild
in me,
although i
keep
her summer breeze
alive.

i’ve always hated august
the anticipation that
comes along with her
heated embrace
her clammy hands
on my face
she wants to be
a motherly figure
to take my mother’s
place, but she’s
just too forceful
not merciful
enough.
i want a refund
for all the
money i spent for
her
to keep loving
me,
but she lets me go
like i’m some
contagious cold
that only wants to
keep you close
so
it can give you
the most sniffles.

i’ve always hated august
her savage remarks
how she gets so dark
when i just want to
feel her presence
at eight o’clock.
she’s always busy
getting wasted,
her neglecting
so shameless,
she shoos me away
like a poor peasant
begging
at her feet.
the actions she
never apologizes
for,
she adores seeing
her
tanning children
suffer,
cry their brains open
since they have
no hope
and
no happiness.

i’ve always hated august
cause it always
seems
like she hates
me.
i wish we had
a better relationship
but she’s always made
my life a living
shipwreck,
again, i am beached.

i see things in high definition colour, but
july is the only month that fluctuates—
between florida orange and, later, burnt sienna;
everything between the 1st to the 31st
is dipped in a honey-glaze of three things:
1. warm, sticky air
2. the feeling of 6pm
3. bicycles riding through fields of fireflies.

naturally, i spend most of july in my bedroom—
the heat gets to me, makes my allergies flare
and i watch movies; old, 80s, movies (or—tiktok clips
of the same movie, only broken up into thirty-six parts
that i view from my bed with my naked legs spinning vertical circles through the air).

i always forget the feeling of august
until it’s there again. july
overshadows it with the final embers, so i only realise
it's august on maybe the 5th or 6th. almost
a full week into a month that my brain—
which is never wrong about the way things feel—
sees a deep, ocean blue.

i don't write home about august. i don't hurry it up
through winter months, when i begin the countdown
to hot, hazy days. if anything, i view august
as the ending of something, of a summer i wished so hard for.

and every time, it blindsides me with love.

i love things more in august. i love the smell of summer-
rain on the pavement. i love songs i listened to in january.
i love waiting around for halloween. i love my bedroom,
the pause of heat-sick sleep, the blue-sky mornings.

i write love letters to autumn in a time capsule. i text july and ask u up?, and wyd?, and come over?

and still, when summer ends, i will never want to get what i wish for.

Rolling out from blue lotus
off the sky
nymphs in tangerine bright
all colours
tuck into disappearing
rainbow slides.
Ah, fragrance
of the broad daylight
a day in summery August
is still heady
weaving blue butterflies!

How I long for your wide open sky.
I long for your sunbeams and your rain—whatever falls into my mouth,
I will gladly take in.

August. How I cling to all your pasts
and all your uncertain futures.
I cling to your promise of ever ever green
and I wait at your doorstep, naive nymph from nether.

Was it for nothing, August?
Do I keep you on my tongue and never in my heart?
August. August.

Endless pastures and lightning-laden nights. Your fleeting love speaks through the dark.

The urge to run away to a seaside town,
To let the salt air peel the paint from the front of my house.

The urge to settle, to let it sink in, to decorate my front porch.
The urge to let my mind rest and work until my back's sore.

The urge to love you
And to be well.

In that salt air town,
Where everyone knows my name.
Most importantly,
The urge to throw it all away.