i

I’ve been waiting for the dandelion fingers to swim in the sprinklers,
nearly drown in the man-made rain. They’re breathing as of now.

Once, a young boy accompanied his mother to the laundromat
and then a blackout occurred. The electricity stopped conditioning the air.

Fear creates body heat in its piles. This was the story of 1977.
Not even the dog that pants himself to insanity would tell one to murder.

Everybody gets the sweat eyes, blurry windshields. The sun
creates an obscurity storm, shoot like a mirage, the trigger that sets off hearts.

All the sunflowers have arms to bear with protruding veins,
visible capillaries of chlorophyll. Trees may waver, but never leave.

In April, everybody plays Saint Thomas. In June, the violas
are exchanged for guitars, synthesized like Judas to the hour.

No teachers, yet scrutiny remains. Summer bares its blazing skin.
Every mark is magnified; the night is the only opportunity for living.

                                      ii

Minutes drip like popsicles. I’m never one to complain about
the orange stickiness, but there is no love here worth adhering to.

My soul has melted into the hands of clouds, so bring the gray,
shield my skin, let me shine as white as the newly posted street lights.

To the crowds on the crumbling sidewalks: bless me with your water!
The wind hasn’t followed my neck, even when I tempt alleyway dangers.

Don’t you see the possibility of glittering pools in the potholes?
Sometimes the skies appear like burnt toast, overdone like kisses.

No more adoring fans in the windows! How can one see the bathing suit brigade
giggling down the street with winged blades whirring like bluebirds fluttering?

Sight the small ants on their mound of chocolate, desperate and childlike
as if searching for answers to questions about previous Testaments.

The juice was gulped from the slippery cup, poured into a broken throat;
I once heard that there is nothing immaculate about blood-soaked sandals.

                                      iii

I almost loved my past infatuations again. This is delirium.
My heart perspires in waves as the breeze continually argues with me.

I could easily lose my mind. Tested profoundly in my virginity,
I stared into the ghost of my books, the chill of my bookcase.

March never bears desired fruit. There are no valentines to possess,
no construction paper expressions until the skirts are let loose.

Deer leap from the forest preserve to the avenue rush like suicidal drives
that are unpredicted, no notes or bodily fluid or flower petals to demonstrate it.

Ginsberg used to encourage displaying moonlight and madness;
Aberration is ambrosial when you can hinder the lanterns.

All autumn the doorways were coated in rusty red leaves
like a dye stain, but this color of torridity rose like a resuscitated sparrow.

When I was sixteen, the inside of doors sang out a consistent hum
of mutated air. No poet can speak in a mangled tongue. That is prose.

                                     iv

Through the ribbon streamers of water, chalk is effaced and children run
tip-toed in the puddles, absorbing prismatic dirt in their heels.

More time to gain the attention of prisons. Every represented color
shoots for the crimson they don’t comprehend, aiming at incorrect targets.

A boy sits in the darkness of coolness, eyeing his closet
for sympathy, a cave of the maturation process, total pubescence.

It’s the same three chords, gold spools tangled in the strings
for jangly guitars in a pure mood above jade and pearl.

One touch, with the ice cream truck background, can turn anyone into
a river mouth, gushing in the flood days. Don’t tell me I’m anything else.

The rabbits congregate at the elementary school like a parish
but dodge the red and purple hands of time-biding kids. Their fingers are glue.

Oh no! The heat wave lingers on the back porch; my bare feet
on hot coals, I’ll never mow the grass, the hair cut will have to wait it out.

                                     v

Adolescence thrives in the movie theatre, cool as Newman
and smokes just as much, views the plumes through screen door glares.

The moon smiles slyly, keeps it tongue drawn out for a milky way.
The sun has a different sweet tooth, encourages the clouds to start trickling.

Careless crooning is uttered on the bus. There is a beach to get to,
tourists to tease and Lake Michigan to talk to with our swimsuit shells.

As a college senior, I saw the downtown towers loom like political gusts.
The neon whited the stars out, made themselves a cluster of ghost light bulbs.

The suburbs are nothing but sanitized branches of the public library
who fears the girl with the Salinger novel and determined bookmark.

A spirit is perturbed easily with the taxi crawls by the corners
of beloved Lakeview. The myriad bars cannot guard the vodka drawl.

My friend once said he’d name his children Addison and Clark.
He has to hope for their births in baseball season, the fly balls prime to signal them.

                                      vi

The river wrote great graffiti on the brick wall. Its mouth knows
the flood, never wanted to water down its sordid memory of frightened geese.

All the public schools recognize death in between the lunched minutes.
A road begs for a tissue. Two lanes do not resolve metropolis congestion.

The Midwest sneaks an urban stretch or two into its miles, hailing
Wilco and the blues that slipped in from Memphis bandit-style and fugitive-eyed.

Dear Journal, my humor lets my lips avoid the contact of secret suitors.
They do not make themselves known, even in the banana-peeling sunshine.

Meanwhile my juvenile neighbor osculates a boy on an uncarved lawn she does not
belong to. An older woman feeds her weeds apple cores, compares the rottenness.

So when I think of summer I think of passion, I remember
the beads of moisture that happen suddenly in variable conditions of my pores.

O summer! Ridiculous summer! How you reconfigure the soul
in connection to the heart of the body and break your promises in September…

[Imitation of “Ghazals for Spring” by Spencer Reece]