SPECTRUM summertime

Dog Days The dog days of Summer are barking at the shadows sweating under a blistering sun blaring light into dusk spewing heat into the sweltering city streets setting fire to the asphalt burning at both ends a season disappearing into the space time continuum; the days may be numbered but the kids selling lemonade at the corner can quench your thirst for a quarter and put a smile on your face here where the ashes start to gather amidst this blissful apocalypse.

A Summer Birthday Poem   The summer I turned 20, I was dancing in the topography of museums and bakeries, subways and symphonies. The Actors Studio, Village Voice and 92nd ST Y were locales of mine. I had left school and the Valley after a semester seeking epiphany.   I found humidity and lucidity.  I was given a typewriter I still have. The summer I turned 40, I was swaying in the breeze of 14th century cafes. Praha was full to the brim with tourists, I was studying film at FAMU International. Czech New Wave, Old Town Square, Charles Bridge, Astronomical Clock. Living breathing bouquet of maps, scattering petals as history and memory collide.   Who knows where I will be when I turn 60.

Whatever Sky You Can Imagine Skies in a drawer of photographs. Instamatic  square skies.  Mostly clear skies over calm seas and beaches in Florida. Stormy skies over inlets,  bays and canals. Summer skies  over swamps. Overcast  Okeechobee skies.  Cape Canaveral  window to  the stars skies. Winter grey Appalachian skies. Tennessee, Virginia,  Carolina skies  taken through windshields, side windows, rear windows, sun roofs, every mountain, valley, tree line starting to look  the same in all  these monotonous squares. Yet every sky is different some with a wisp  of cloud, smoke from fire or factory, bird or plane suspended in a corner.  Steeple, transmitter or tower  juxtaposed against a canopy of hardwoods or pines.  A handful of urban skies. Grime and noise rising,  wafting through the roar from trains and airports. Upstate New York skies. Niagara Falls and Great Lakes roiling skies. Mississippi Delta s...

The Day After The day after the Fourth of July At an Inglewood gas station Grease monkey, eighteen and bullet proof  A dipstick in my hand pumping dead dinosaurs My hometown rapidly transforming into hard stares  and thrown finger signed death Baby-faced gangsters walk in looking for tires For their Mama, they say One carries a yellow Peechee folder that he opens revealing the dull blue horror of explosive metallic death  A threat of Gone Forever Suddenly stuck in my face I stare at the bottomless black hole barrel that swallows the summer light whole They take the money from the drawer Threatening to end me As if it is nothing As if I am nothing but a punched timecard My hands tied, shoved into the back room Now alone with them among tumbled batteries and spare parts Awash in the acrid smell of rubber and oil reminds me of growing up — reminds me of my father Of the void left by the so many words never said The gunman a nervous kid younger than me His hand shaking with m...

Summer 2020 It's different this year Oh sure, there is still the sun but we're all stuck in our homes We sit in front of computer screens missing our grandparents and worried about school in the fall Beaches are closed pools are closed even Disneyworld is closed The world exhales and works to make a future for the summer of 2020

Seasonal Sayings?  How am I to know what you mean  When you ask, "Do you seek help?"  Or when I hear "Do you see kelp?"  It's Summer. So I assume the latter.  Write it down to avoid ambiguity.  Soul Man On Lockdown The body is only the container.  What is important is what is inside.  At the moment, it is 3 Martinis and   Number 4 is about to join the party. BLM BLM on a bumper sticker  Directs you to think about truth  Like a bible verse that reminds you  That you should avoid sin.  Not a law that directs you  To execute Sinners.  

On the Way to Summer The scent of long days and the enchanting sounds of children playing in the street Roaring of high waves and the seduction of warm nights Back doors stand wide open to capture the hawkish open current A hummingbird crosses the garden path close enough for the bird of paradise to hear the the study  whirl of his amazing wings Hours with nothing to do but to dream endless dreams Summer seduces me with it's lush trees, crystal cloudless skies and sweet breath. Summer is in its full glory Air humid and clear Children roller skate on the hot concrete sidewalk Jacaranda trees dance in the afternoon light Men are shirtless, skin tan and  glossy, showing off- their physique Women float along like white butterflies. Young girls are colts about to run. Young men are on the brink of hormones. Flowers I can’t even name bask in full bloom in a flood of warm golden light de Kooning would   die for. It’s time to wake from my long winter’s slumber.  Four Va...

Hope Listening to your voice on the other side of silence gives me the courage to lose sight and swim there,  your voice is hope trusting the future. Your voice  is summer. It calls me now: we are what we hear,  doubt is deadlier, but fear cuts deeper than air,  and I am not moving toward revenge,  I forgive myself my own loneliness.  It’s hard to form. With With a million smiles and still lonely. I said: “Only once. It’s because we’ve forgotten our hearts.” You said: “Once is enough, if with compassion.” “Must have been a dream,” I considered and said zero,  but late one night, on the knife-edge of dawn,  I found the words: “Once is enough,” you mumbled,  your brow bracing the summer sky. Precious Summer. Solstice. June. 21st. The smell of the rays. Faces of children. May I always consider them precious. Hearts of lovers. May I always consider them precious. Hands of judges. May I always consider them precious. May I be the seer of visions a...

A Scent of Yesterday The morning sun dappled by leaves on the floor a flickering pattern, a whisper of scent fleeting through the open window, moist earth  pulling me to past summer days, years vanishing our ages rolling backward to summers of youth and a home that arose from a flower filled field accompanying wet sheets hung out to dry and flashes of color birds flitting in and out of the bushes completing tasks before the languid afternoon took our energy and we sat and drank lemonade moving with the shade of the house or lying prone baking away the winter in ourselves. A moist scent of earth fresh before the overlay of city made it sharp, a scent that held the essence of summer and youth and promise retrieved from under layers of life, a fleeting fragment of another time another place.

Zoom Upon a Summertime Dylan could sit in Candy’s kitchen for hours and not drink a beer or scratch his beard. No, Dylan didn’t think that he deserved a medal, a passionate French kiss, or anything equally notable for being so baffled and memorized by her. Well, maybe a French kiss--if it is not too much trouble--would hit the spot. Candy lived in an upstairs loft with a fantastic view of Dylan’s very most favorite watering hole. Unfortunately, he has been worried lately that a bad brew may keep him out of circulation for the duration. On occasion, Dylan has almost fallen prey to the moon’s early morning tantalizing mush. It could have been a real “jungle rumble summer tumble” as his uncle Big Aristotle once removed always said after drinking like a flounder on a Friday night. Without a doubt, Candy has been a truly committed tai chi teacher, and also has pulled inspiration from the healing power of hummingbirds. Yet, Dylan has kept quiet about his attempt to find salvation inhaling wi...

Fourth of July 1981 Clouds, like a herd of whales,  dark bellies passing overhead, wheel and turn, moving northeast. I stand beneath that majestic entourage Watching, at dusk on the Fourth of July, while the children down the street stop   lighting Roman candles, running  to seek the shelter of porch roofs  as Nature’s fireworks outdo Man’s. part of A Former Life from Finishing Line Press

 Sex on the Beach             “But I know it when I see it, and the [poem]                             involved in this case is […] that.”                                   -- United States Supreme Court                                                  Justice Potter Stewart   Rain reveals mystery in summertime, where all of life’s  answers drop into the graphite sun, a shape-shifting amalgam that is the bedrock of all knowledge. Walking on Western-Sea Walla Walla religions, I am a bummer digging myself through the summer into the wild-oxygen night sky. Your nearing shine pierces—penetrates—my own rays awry and sundried-tomato lips send me from email void into...

summer as in Donna remember her? she sang our troubles away like Demeter's child like new beer and old wine like childhood reenacted by adults a singer named Summer who carried our hearts to new heights and left us tingling without support to find our own wings to the ground or wherever we went next hot times oh my gosh, it's ninety-three degrees out there! oh mu goodness, it's July!  it's summer! every year surprises us like that as if we had not used up the previous hundred and eighty some days one at a time with winter and spring fripperies teased out to entertain us as long as the coffee lasts how do we do that?  entertain ourselves then be surprised that months, weeks, days have passed and it's time again for short, short skirts and swimsuits for horseback riding in bandannas and sombreros for thanking the winds of summer for the skirts they lift for a solstice without a sacrifice to pay kalokaíri      (Greek for summer) Proserpina's back! flowers riot, gra...

Summer   Early memories of the shadowy grunge of the the Bronx streets of my early childhood elicit            pictures of colorless seasons, bare cement sidewalks, tan tenement buildings, and large lots filled with gray Quonset huts inhabited by poor families mostly of war veterans unable to work, who in my child’s mind all seemed to have too many children.   Winters didn’t see many people on the streets and the few trees in the area were bare; snow and chill and muddy slush were everywhere.  Spring was a bit brighter though the few trees sprouted little worthy of mention, autumn was nothing like what songs spoke about; the leaves that fell were already brown.    It was only in the summer, when the heat and humidity were nearly unbearable, when the blazing sun reflected off chrome bumpers of passing cars and some blessed soul took pity on the kids wrenched open a fire hydrant and cool clean water flooded out, th...

Footprints   (past) by the window I stand sun beams wave through blinds darkness fills the room words light up kill time to make time (present) out the door hitting the pedal to run the horsepower to my ride keeping it loose as roads converge and split accelerate and break natural and artificial lights guide the way bloom and leaves skitter (future) across campus through a myriad of doors confusion concussion birds twittering tune ups classes fill time feet pitter patter to the beat forming outdoors the strong sense of hope wonderment easing the path cultivated from inside      i am not that person…   i am not that person the one holding his hand admiring his dimple chin two feet above me breathing in his aftershave and the usual body odor that makes him him   i am not that person the one smiling at jack rabbits promenade around the court paying attention to their tails swaying with each leap allowing his hand to trace my shoulder blades under the shade ...

Ariel and Me At night we stroll past West Side Sacramento’s streets, holding hands, eager to return and let our tongues vibrate and extend into each other’s mouths. At home Ariel fixes me tea, serves me rice and yams,  about all we can afford. Ariel sits so serene in his favorite spot on the sofa in our parlor. E.B. stops over and pours his mystical light on me. E.B.’s words whisper shroud me, for Ariel to become jealous. Hot winds pervade the humid summer air, swaying our Venetian blinds that tap against the windowsill as a soldier’s cadence. I gaze out our window, down an immense boulevard waiting for a calming silence to come over me. Endless Summer Mentality In my mind’s prison cell delusions fill its space. I struggle to sleep at night, contending with the facade of my existence. Peace is sparse and I am unable to flee the fires of the summer, a burning hell among fears I face. I want to free myself of my responsibilities, to ride along Idaho’s riverbanks, letting winds flow a...

Heat's Kingdom Heat's kingdom blazes street transparent, crystalline on opals the size of golf balls. Whiteness of rosy skin cancer itinerant rises on headlines furrowed on brow with arrow of time reversed in prayerful cure. The narrow road visualized is a rod pounded into a needle that weaves summer's short sleeves once long to hide tracks of smack injection.  The rosy crucifixion resurrects the dark night of heat with the thud of ruby heart, McQueen's blob. I could love the disease of vision again with drills of introspection questioning toys with the fast thrills of nudity nudged by spiritualized strangers, even if their visions were borrowed from the hallmark hal- lucinations that brim over, basking in the blaze from heat's kingdom's bleak cauldron of copper.  Authority figures in this picture with freedom of expression, freedom of religion.  Structure does not marry heaven and hell, the place where earth dwells. Instead, the opals' fires burn beyond t...

The Endless Now and so you run from the sun deep into the night but the faster and further you run the sooner you see that same sun in all its dreaded resplendent  comeuppance once again cruelly shining in your face and mocking your puny and futile attempt to escape in such a hurry to mature you try to leave your green and foolish youth behind clambering up that hill to reach the peak and  find out what it’s all about but when you get there you’ll be quick to realize it’s not what you’d envisioned it to be and the only direction is downward  from now on you try to elude all thoughts of death by hurtling headlong into life careening ever deeper  into full bio-immersion –  and drawing closer  to the dying that all living blossoms into in the end you stagger from the past with wasted days  and darkness in your wake, a landscape steeped in sorrow and regret –  forever hopeward bound, you cast your eyes  on the disquieting horizon and freeze in th...

Summer School Senryu (1) PRE-TEST It's like light rain heard outside a window-- students writing. (2) CLASSWORK Binders opening and closing--popcorn, popcorn, popcorn! (3) FRIDAY TEST Chair leaning back, looking for answers in the ceiling. (4) STUDENT DESK Orange edged, scraped wood butterflies leave graphite droppings. (5) NO LOCKERS On the tables of the Creative Writing class, Algebra and Calculus books. Dog Months First party of summer better be by June August is the best, those longest days   A pool is the accessory for tanning in the sun   Sunbathe yourself to match the watermelon you'll eat Grill them steaks, warm that chair    Hot dogs and lemonade   Sprinklers on the lawn, sun visor on your head   Mosquito buzz around croquet mallets   Play badminton to the smell of insect spray Loud as thunderstorms, lawnmowers roll on    Flowers leap open as if to scuba dive in blue air Time to take a volleyball vacation    After all, why ...