summer heat

goodbye
shut-in classrooms
artificial birds and fake-blue skies
virtual reality
sweaty middle passage regimen
congested backpacks
traffic indigestion
exam bewilderment
and dreaded report cards

farewell
UN-sound system
see you post summer (perhaps)
your rigid doors slam shut
keys thrown away
for a season
summer heat has landed
to celebrate new life

i could eat my free paper raw
but it is my passport
to free-run mango walks
and fragile guinep branches
rose apples and sugarplums and hogplums
sweetcups and tamarind and starapples
that lust after my
unquenchable palate

i’m going to create my own colic
from ripe bananas and naseberries
bottleneck pears and millie mangoes
sweetcups, sweetsops, soursops
sugarloaf pineapples and coolie plums
otaheite apples and pimento berries

ah, but summer heat
strikes full in the face
a wantonness that knows no bounds
too soon my friends and i
are raisins in the sun

urgent cooling
of wild emergent brains
drags book-whipped bodies
to waterholes and waterfalls
to river and deep blue sea
for we have died and gone to heaven
these next eight glorious weeks
are ours to cherish hour by hour

until one dreadful day
free paper burn!
our reverie expires
like reluctant book learning
and we are shackled again
razor-edged khaki-bound for…

…shut-in classrooms
artificial birds and fake-blue skies
virtual reality
sweaty middle passage regimen
congested backpacks
traffic indigestion
exam bewilderment
and dreaded report cards…

© Copyright 2018 July 30
by Clyve A. Bowen