It is not yet warm to go outside.
As the trees like gummed statues fall to sleep,
They stretch their tired limbs
Heralding their fresh bareness.
Suits and vendors weary lean on
Time and morrows and coffee.
Men scrape the ashes into monuments,
Images of what they are not.
Needless pyres on wasted islands,
Control of the uncontrollable,
A foothold in the unfathomable.
The iron fingers rape the new ground
Thoughtlessly, while tempests rage within
As the loin and seed are torn sunder.
It is not yet warm to go outside.
As the freeze scorns its brethren earth
And hardens its beauty with malice,
The women bundle in isolation,
Protected from elements and ores,
Carving routes with hot eyes,
Focused on absent destinations.
Cars spew darkness on crystal canvas.
Children press their cruelty between their hands.
The street breathes vapor, calling
Itinerant preachers and eaters
To crowd before its promise of heat.
It is not yet warm to go outside.
As the rain cuts the streets cold,
Racing homeful to gutters
That voidly embrace their companions,
Sewers where men lie
Drunk on sadness and shiver,
Faithless enough to lie there forever.
Crippled earth molts and hides,
Unable to bear the weight of skin and
The thinness of life surrounding.
The new bursts forth in every crevice
And fissure, only to be trod upon,
Hoping to fade into blissful nothing.
It is not yet warm to go outside.
As the heat warps your vision
With ample noise to drown the silence
That stalks the neighborhoods
Laughing at the skeletons and families,
Dark histories held before the vendors and
Drivers and lovers and children,
Absorbing all the light that begs to
Break forth.
Bodies baked and skin seared
From too few eyes, too little notice.
The rope pounds the beat of
Desperation that sizzles through the city.
Hydrants explode with meager hope,
Forming puddles which fill with oil and grease.
It is not yet warm to go outside.
RG
