Earth and Heat Meet

2020

    “Mommy I’m soooo hot!”

I just imagine my daughter complaining

After just 20 minutes of play time outside

Her cheeks flushed, her energy waning

 

Temperature today:

101 degrees Fahrenheit and its only May!

 

What do I tell my precious baby doll who’s organs sizzle in this heat?

When her skin’s beat red by the sun’s rays, UVA UVB and body meet

 

What do I tell my porcelain skinned girl?

When she asks me if it was this hot when I was little in this world?

 

What do I tell her

When she asks me, “Mommy what is cancer?”

 

Test results back:

I lay in bed weak and wet with tears, broken like an egg that cracked

 

 

“But I covered her from head to toe in that white stuff we call block!!”

I yell through sobs with disbelief in pure and utter shock

 

I never could have thought playtime could be so harsh

Why my young sweet daughter?

I turn this question over and over in my head

As the air outside waits tauntingly getting hotter and hotter

Watching waiting willing-I wake up today

Worried wondering why-the sky looks so grey

Could it be more angry clouds? Condensed and cruel?

Carrying with them rain, the frenetic world’s fuel?

Ignorant Illusion I have!-That haze is not a cloud

Illuminated Intoxicated Inquiring-my realization is loud

If not a cloud than what is it? That hovering thing above?

Swirling mass of grayness that squeezes the sky, tightly like a glove?

Dark Dangerous Dread-is the answer that I have found

Damaging Dirty Daunting-they are gases created from the ground!

Leaking from cars, bikes, houses, surrounding our planet to suffocate.

We feed ourselves pollution, serving it on a daily plate.

Lingering Lurking Lasting-as an infinite circle in the sky

Literally Looping Life-enveloping humanity like a shoe tie

Yum how appetizing! Is it the main course?

This circular cluster of pollution which carries no remorse?

Everlasting Eerie Eternal-this cycle we created chugs along

Ending Everyone’s Ease-from Zimbabwe to Hong Kong

I’m not the only one who wakes up today

With the realization that our blue sky looks so grey

Watching Waiting Willing-we all open our eyes

Worried Wondering Why-as we hop into our rides-there’s no blue left in our skies

You’re Not Dreaming This Should Come As No Surprise!

 

 

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Careless fingers clench the can filled with liquid to the top

After drinking down the tasty brown you stutter then you stop

Look left look right no garbage can in sight

Then you look down to the ground, no ones watching, right?

The drink you drank slips slowly out your hand

Pretending you don’t feel its weight as gravity pulls it to the land

* * *

Pit pit pat the sounds of life emerge

Crackle and a crack then out pops a bird

 

Helpless and wobbling with tilted equilibrium

She looks for her mother but bumps into aluminum

 

Her first sensation of life is not her mother’s breast

Glowing with inner warmth a body that’s feather dressed

 

Dead cold and flat instead the tot feels steal

Lifeless and artificial the manmade and bird congeal

 

She snuggles up to the tin can who like the Tin Man has no heart

No constant tone no beating drone just a coke purchased from Wal-Mart

Destined Blackness

Like a lost puppy, Stephen hobbled through the blackened damp night, the only sense of life being the drips of rain water streaking down his prickly cactus of a face and exploding in a splash near his tattered shoes. His grey eyes seemed stuck to the ground as he stared at nothingness and dragged his tired legs with him.

After another long day of work, Stephen’s mind continuously spun and reeled like the machine he had grown to know meticulously as a worker. The solitary voice within his head seemed to echo with a bleak hint as he thought to himself in the darkness.

“Oh wherest thy dear lady Rachael? Her golden smile twould bring my heart much needed happiness.”

Rachael was the one person who added a hint of sparkle to Stephen’s monotonous life. It was at night when the two could meet in the streets of Coketown and imagine their world free from suffocating smoke which leaked from the assembly of factories in which they worked. But it was not Rachael that night who Stephen would typically see and relish in their time spent, speaking of this fanciful fictional life.

With his head hunched over like a tired ogre, his eyes still glued to the floor below, a surge of unexpected pain rushed to the top of his balding grey haired head. His eyes bounced up immediately from the cold ground, looking up to pin point the culprit as if he could see clearly as day; but the black night prevented any chance for clear vision.

“Rachael…tis, tis thoust you?” he managed to squeeze out uncertainly, in hopes that the throbbing pain underneath his wiry hair was from blindly bumping into his lady admirer. But it was not the soft spoken Rachael who answered. Instead, a deep bellowing grunt sprang from the darkness.

            “Rayyy-chuull?” the voice sounded out her name a little too slow Stephen thought. The dark voice continued, “Rayy-chuull? No I am not Ray-chull. My creator named me Frankenstein. What is your name?”

Stephen answered blindly unafraid, ”Oh thy name tis Stephen Blackpool, but thoust can call me Stephen.” He paused for a moment only to rub his rub his throbbing head, "Tis nice t’ meet you.”

           Stephen’s sight was full of nothing but a blank slate of black, but the darkness allowed the two beings to exchange their soul's findings. Stephen was surprised to find out how similar Frankenstein was to him. Like Stephen, Frankenstein was stuck in a life which was created for him; he had no place to hide. He never knew who he was because so much of him was foreign interconnection. Both Stephen and Frankenstein were destined for darkness.

DAD

The 6 Sick Secrets

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Bioplar? A two headed monster? An Alter egoed Hulk? A Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde? No-just my father. One minute pleasure, next minute pain. He hid in his own skin like a prisoner in a jail cell, held hostage by his own addictions. He locked our family up with him in a downward spiraling whirlwind, choking away our hope, and drowning us all in turbulent pain where there was no key to loosen the bolts he drilled through our hearts. We kept quiet. We couldn’t find a way out. Our whole life was a secret.
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. . . . . . . . . . . . Spring Secret
Daddy and I had a thing only the two of us did. We played catch in the back yard together. I remember his smile and the warm breeze of Spring wrapping around our bodies tightly like my mitt wrapped around the ball he threw to me. I squeezed the ball, making sure not to drop it. It didn’t fit very well inside my glove, but with force I was able to hold on. That’s how Daddy held on to his family. We were his baseball, and he didn’t dare let us squeeze out of his grip.
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. . . . . . . . . . . .Black Secret
I was at home alone with my father one night. Thinking back to it now, I don’t remember much, but a heavy presence of darkness that crept up and trapped me throughout the night. The darkness lived inside my father, and he let it escape to haunt me. He tried to hit me. I don’t know what held him back. Nothing physical, but I didn’t think he had a conscience to stop him. I remember trying to run away from his stinging breath, those intoxicating fumes of whisky. I remember turning away from his stare, but it still lingered around me; lurking and threatening, enclosing me in a bubble of murky blackness. I remember the crescendo of my heart beat vibrating inside my chest, traveling through me, reverberating inside my head. I remember the panic that jabbed through me, poking me with needles full of poison, tranquilizing my comfort and transforming my being into pure fear. I remember his eyes looked thirsty as rivers of bloodshot veins drowned out the emerald green he once had.
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TO BE CONTINUED..........